I love 84!

I had some friends into exotic cars and we'd take 84 over to the coast now and again, mostly because we had a shit-ton of money and a shit-ton of spare time to kill -- the Dot-Com fucking rocked!

There's a bend in the road just outside La Honda on the coastal side that's a 15mph hairpin with a tree at the apex. It's a lovely goddamn thing, especially when you forget it's there. So here we all come, lane-trading and exercising general assholery in cars that cost what a nice single-family home does.

Oh FUCK, the turn!!

My friend in the 911 does this beautiful trail-brake and swings through the curve. Elise follows suit, complete with smoking tires. Next up is Countach. He BARELY holds it together, but gets through without any real drama.

Now it's my turn.

Did I mention I was driving a '97 Camaro Z-28? Yeah, Camaros of that year are good at exactly one thing: driving very fast in very straight lines. Corners? Yeah, not so much. I realize I'm in trouble and I'm coming into the turn WAY too fast. I grab the shifter and get ready. My plan is that I'm going to slam it into first, let the rev limiter do its thing to save the engine, pull the e-brake and swing the tail, then punch it and swing the ass-end around and launch out of the curve with smoking Z-rated tires and all!

And HERE WE GO -- grab the shifter, yank it all the way down and...

That's when California emissions standards fucked me.

You see, when you buy a Camaro Z-28 in California, you don't actually get first gear. You get what's called a California First, which is actually SECOND gear, because if you were actually able to use FIRST gear, the goddamn car would belch enough emissions to make a farting Brontosaurus blush. And second gear ain't exactly gonna work for my little plan.

tl;dr is that I hit the no-lock brakes hard enough to get my speed down and was able to bring the ass around with the little e-brake trick. I wasn't out of the woods because I over-corrected on the way out and spun. The same God that I spite and don't believe in actually saved my ass and I didn't end up going off the road. Apparently, he loves fools and Z-28 Camaros.

I honestly had more fun in that car than the law allows: sometimes literally, like when I got clocked at 110 coming onto the straight at King City. Good times, man, good times.

So I was unclear; did the gear end up doing a gravity drop? Or did the pilot in the front cockpit initiate an emergency procedure like with a spare reservoir or something?

*promote

In reality, it wasn't spare time tinkering at all, it was serious academics doing full time paid research funded by the government. ARPANET, while funded by the defense department, was designed by and connected college researchers, the first transmissions were between UCLA and Stanford in 69, not the military. This was the first networking, the infant internet.
The military system in the 60's was a point to point tonal encryption system that ran on proprietary bell telephone systems with dedicated direct phone lines until the FCC forced Bell to give up it's capitalistic monopoly in 68, allowing for advancements in both the public and eventually private sector that led to the infant internet instead of just individual "computers" (and I use the term lightly here) directly communicating. Remember, back then, almost into the 90's, you needed to know the direct phone number of the other computer to connect (think "War Games"), there was no publicly accessible network.
The first retail internet transaction wasn't until 94.

Also imo, it was weird individuals tinkering in their spare time that made home computing anything more than very expensive word processors/calculators. We've had PCs since the 70's in my home, I remember what they could do then....I'm one of those weird individuals.

Long and short, your 5 different capitalistic ways ALL stem from a purely socialist base and a socialist denial of private for profit monopolies, and most if not all of them were developed and implemented using at least some public funding. Without that, we would still be using bell telephone phone modems to direct dial each other. Without public/private cooperation, neither sector could advance like they have together.
Imo, it's not an either/or situation, it's both.

There was no ground movement to develop the internet that was somehow community or government funded and that ultimately made it popular and useful.

In reality there was a 60s military communications project that got traction (after decades of basically spare-time tinkering development by weird individuals funded by socialism) when capitalism made home computers possible. Then it skyrocketed because profits could be made.

Socialism was an expensive land telephone line. Capitalism is five different ways I could get connected tomorrow at speed if I decide today. I just realized I stopped thinking about how fast my internet connection is years ago.

They actually look pretty repairable... and the problem is that buying them all up for spares has driven up the going rate for them!

https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/singing-fish.htm

Yep. I'm thoroughly impressed. I hope she got lots of spare fish. It won't be nearly as impressive with 1/4 of them nonfunctional, and I would expect them to break regularly.

@BSR

I already donate regularly to my local children's hospital, give any spare change I have to people you describe, and work at an inner city school where I keep boxes of cereal (it's cheap and vitamin packed and the kids like it) because my students come up to me on a somewhat regular basis hungry.

But as an individual, it's easy to act alone. To combat what one considers bad-public-policy, one must join the conversation.

What are you really asking me to do here? Someone posts some racist memes and I'm to keep my mouth shut because it won't do anything. I do not agree.

I can act alone, but to change policy it starts by having conversations about perceived ills in society. Forgive me but keep your stoic silence to yourself and I'll keep talking if the spirit moves me.

@BSR

I already donate regularly to my local children's hospital, give any spare change I have to people you describe, and work at an inner city school where I keep boxes of cereal (it's cheap and vitamin packed and the kids like it) because my students come up to me on a somewhat regular basis hungry.

But as an individual, it's easy to act alone. To combat what one considers bad-public-policy, one must join the conversation.

What are you really asking me to do here? Someone posts some racist memes and I'm to keep my mouth shut because it won't do anything. I do not agree.

I can act alone, but to change policy it starts by having conversations about perceived ills in society. Forgive me but keep your stoic silence to yourself and I'll keep talking if the spirit moves me.

well, just spare a thought for all the parents that named their kid "Khaleesi"

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA

At least since he was alone we were spared the usual spectator asking "are you ok?" immediately after it happened.

Your video, Russian Spare Tire, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

No, no need, my culture has discovered the spare tire.

Maybe he really did mean he had a little more care leftover? Maybe he uses his care sparingly. You know. Like when you only have a little weed left but payday is 3 days away.

The t-34 was a piece of shit that could barely function and had to actually carry spare transmissions,on the tank itself. The Russian army was so dysfunctional they lost all the ones that did actually function.it was extremely slow to acquire targets ,and slow to reload.