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Also, the pop-over video player and display ads will disappear! That’s cool.
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Regarding that RAM radio, I actually had an Eonon radio a while back and it was shockingly decent. They made a touchscreen radio that fit my Saturn Astra and integrated with the Canbus to keep all of the functionality that was in the stock radio and allowed me to still use the little stock info center screen that remained in the car. They even honored the warranty when it stopped working after a couple years and shipped me an upgraded version. But yeah, there was a language barrier when dealing with their support. But they have been around at least 10 years at this point.
Matt, I see that it says “have a new car review every week”. I hope that means that it will be a new review of an older or interesting car each week. Cars that are actually “new” are not interesting at all. I’m guessing I’m not the only Autopian who thinks that. I parked our car in a row of crossover/SUV blobs last week. They were all black-white-grey blobs. The little Civic Si stood out. My wife has good tastes in fun cars.
I doubt he could find 52 new cars to review even if he wanted to. Or at least worth reviewing.
I’m a big Dr. Greger follower and usually I’m up to date about his stuff but apparently my other favourite read (ie The Autopian) beat him to bringing me the news about a new documentary?
There’s a nucleus of an Autopian Asks in Illusions of Trust.
How would you car-cast this novel?
Whoops, forgot a character
“…a major pharmaceutical company with ties to Christina’s husband. (CHEVROLET COBALT)
“Sony Honda Mobility of America Inc. (SHMA) has opened a new AFEELA Studio at Westfield Valley Fair in San Jose, CA. The new studio, which will remain open for a six-month engagement, offers South Bay Area residents an opportunity to experience the innovative features of the AFEELA 1 firsthand.”
Will there be snacks? I might go if there are snacks.
Love the tone-deaf, double worded, copy-pasted amazon-listing-filler that Carpuride one is. Like they’ve never actually looked at the site.
“Carpuride” sounds like an emetic, also. Terrible name.
Experience “innovative features” of a car that doesn’t move. I’m sorry but the innovative features I want in a car pertain to: get me from Point A to Point B.
“Illusions of Trust” needs more Mack Hardigraw.
It’s been too long since we got a good update on his adventurers!
Post the book review, COWARD!
Anybody getting a whole “She breasted boobily down the stairs” kind of impression from the description of Illusions of Trust?
Hey now, don’t infringe on Lateopian…
In Bust We Trust
That writer must be pretty desperate for reviews to send his book to a car site (though I fully understand!). Seems odd for a “best thriller”, especially with what looks like an AI generated cover and content that could be inspired by an AI query asking for an idea for a thriller by someone who wants to write a book, but lacks inspiration.
Speaking of Joyce, I’m convinced nobody has actually finished Ulysses (not even an editor, as I’ll explain), or at least not more than driven their eyes over the lines and heard the words in their heads without processing the actual meaning of the writing. Critics declared it one of the greatest books of all time because who would dispute them? Once you snooze your way through the first twenty pages or so, there’s a conversation involving more than two parties without any dialogue tags (there are none in the book as far as I could stand to read) and Joyce wasn’t a good enough writer to give his characters distinctive enough voices to tell them apart without them (and why would anyone care to bother?—the damn book is about as compelling and desirable as elevator small talk with strangers). Oh, and the last 20+ pages or so depending on edition are a single sentence. I could be sentenced to solitary prison for decades with no other books to read and it would still probably take me 10 years to bother giving it another shot.
I’ve read Infinite Jest, House of Leaves, and 2666. I haven’t read Gravity’s Rainbow or Ulysses. I’m a perfectly pretentious shithead to try to take it on, but I have a very good notion I’d have no fucking clue what it said and that if I didn’t know it was a retreading of The Odyssey, I’d never figure that out, either.
I used to be a lot more pretentious, but have flipped as I’ve aged and realized that, while I can appreciate the talent often on display in stuff that is critically admired (but not popular with the public), most of the time, I only see it through the eyes of technical expertise, not as a story or other work. Those kinds of books/movies/songs aren’t usually the things that resonate with me or that I find entertaining and are definitely not something I go to twice and I started to ask myself what standard something should meet for me to consider it good. I ended up siding with entertainment and emotional connection over technical brilliance. That said, I still curl my lip a little at something that I feel is too popular.
The Odyssey is one of my favorite stories, so I was intrigued, plus I was curious about what passed for “pornographic” that got Ulysses banned at some point early on. I tried, but after re-reading several pages of the 3+ speaker scene multiple times trying to figure out who was saying what as my ADD brain demanded to know WTF I was doing this, it ended up in the free books bin* with probably 1000 yellowed-page, dog-eared formulaic mass market checkout line romance novels with Fabio on the cover that actually got read and enjoyed.
*It didn’t actually get chucked immediately. A friend borrowed it and came to the same conclusion. He’s the one who pointed out the end being one sentence, though he hadn’t read through entirely.
Oh. I adore The Odyssey. Have you read Emily Wilson’s translation? It literally gives me chills.
No, but I’ve loved it since reading kid versions (it was the ’80s, so a “kid” version didn’t pull as many punches as it would now) when I was a kid. Odysseus’ character, reluctant to go to war, arrogant, brilliant, merciless with the suitors, was the Greek hero I identified with and his journey home resonated with me. Years later, I read a paper contending that the story could be seen as a metaphor for PTSD, which I had (though I didn’t know it at the time), and I have often wondered if part of me also picked up on that and that’s why it meant so much to me. I even wrote a book about three animal adventurers that’s a tongue-in-cheek and heavily cut-down homage to The Odyssey (turns out, when you remove the sex and much of the violence in the interest of opening up the potential age range of the audience, the story is a lot shorter).
More substantively, Infinite Jest came at a time when I was in the mental health unit and just… Was right for where I was and what I needed. Would I read it again? Maybe, though admittedly unlikely. But it is important to me, and while being in low-key jail definitely made it easier to focus on it, once I did I couldn’t put it down, even when I got out. It said things I needed to hear, it challenged me when I needed the challenge, it made me feel like the smartest bastard alive when I got a joke, and it had so much bizarre mundanity I found it soothing at times.
It’s awesome when something can connect with you so powerfully, sometimes in ways the artist never intended. But what is an artist’s intent against the machinations of the Muses?
House of Leaves is the only reading experience that ever made me wonder if I wasn’t smart enough to be reading this book, or if this book had just made me profoundly dumber.
It was the sheer unhingedness of it that appealed to me. The way it subverted the very notion of a novel is/was extremely appealing to me. The physicality of it – oh. I really do love it. And I love the story, too. It’s so deeply unsettling, and that’s mirrored in unsettling format of the book. It’s bugnuts and I don’t even think it’s the pretentious part of me – I’m drawn to queasy, subversive media. Cruelty Squad (a videogame) screws around with what’s it like to even play a game but has deep internal consistency that it takes time to realize. Doki Doki Literature Club was another weird game that did other weird shit that was more than a game.
Not always, of course. Lately I’ve been playing mechabellum, which is basically smashing toy robots together over and over and LOVE it. But that weird shit like HoL does have deep and genuine appeal to me, yet I’d absolutely respect someone wondering “wtf is this shit?” and totally passing on it.
I definitely said “wtf is this shit” but soldiered on to the end anyway. It’s been a while though, so sounds like I should re-read it! Your perspective on the unhingedness might drastically improve my reading experience this time around.
I went from “this is the workings of a maniac and I hate it” to “this is the workings of a maniac and I love it” with A Canticle for Leibowotz with a five-year break between readings, so maybe HoL is the same deal.
“The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads” – Anatoly France.
I like that.
“20+ pages or so are a single sentence”
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Mantenga mi cerveza.
If Eonon want to send me their single DIN Carplay head unit I will install it in the Mini and review it – because that’s the one I’ve been looking to buy.
This sounds like a great idea.
Of course, just because you write it, that doesn’t mean they have to publish it, right? 😉
It would an extremely rare example of the “Adrian wrenches” type of article.
Make it waterproof and padded. Then it would be a big help to PWC riders for navigation and streaming tunes. Well, help is subjective. As if those tempermental little boats needed anything else to fail. Or another way to annoy people by blasting music in addition to the noises of a small displacement 3 or 4 banger droning on and on at 4-5k RPM.
I’m guessing Dr. Greger probably saw content relating to wheelbarrows full of shrimp, the best/worst foods to eat on a road trip, shower spaghetti, et. al. and wanted to reach out to those in most need of help.
A weekly new car review would be nice to keep and maybe grow traffic. I love this site for what it is, and DO NOT desire for it to change it’s core.
That said, more actual reviews and experiences would be nice. New car/motorcycle in the seat reviews and previews have been lacking in recent months. Not sure if it is backlog, overload, lack of access. This is not a criticism, and may just be reality.
Most of the writers are based in the northern latitudes. And the one who isn’t has zero interest in reviewing anything that isn’t a rusty Jeep.
I have enjoyed Adrian’s over the pond reviews of machines we will never see here. Same Mercedes’ motorcycle reviews, though I likely will never buy one.
Living near Chicago is actually great for car reviews. There’s a massive press car pool in the city, and the cars get delivered to your door. Admittedly, my lack of reviews is largely due to overload. But I do want to adjust some things and review more cars this year. I mean, it’s a perk of the job, I might as well use it, right?
Your F-250 press car shi…uhh..odyssey to Baltimore…was the best review I read all year.
This, and Mercedes probably does more regular (and regular person) reviews than most. Thomas pulls his weight as well.
Have you considered a column “A great lawyer reviews a new car every week”? Might solve some issues.
Just saying.
*sidles up like Zoidberg* Frieeend, let your buddy mechjaz help you review some motorcycles why not?
OMG you’re not reviewing all these things?! Isn’t it just one easy trick? Sadly, it really must be true – they don’t want us to know!!
“the American College of Lifestyle Medicine” ….
Have you been contacted by anyone who makes V8 motorcycle frames?
I can’t say I’ve read the book, but I had a friend whose spouse got really into the “how not to die” book.
From my understanding, the guy believes there’s no such thing as “dying of old age” or from natural causes and we could literally not die if we just didn’t eat anything that introduced “toxins” into our system.
Examples of things that introduced toxins? Naturally any artificial flavorings or sweeteners, sure. But also cooked potatoes or roasted nuts. Any kind of meat. Most natural sugars. Cooked vegetables of almost any kind. Butter. Maybe all dairy? I can’t recall. Etc Etc.
His primary evidence was that his aging mother was diagnosed with cancer and stopped eating a bunch of stuff and her cancer magically got better and she lived a lot longer. Very scientific stuff. Although, I think she did eventually die, so pretty sure it’s still false advertising.
No meat, no cooked plants, no dairy. I like raw salads as much as anyone, but they certainly aren’t complete nutrion, are they? If I stop eating everything, I’ll live until I die? Awesome. Not saying I couldn’t stand to reduce the amount I eat, but that’s another issue.
I try to live pretty “healthy” and certainly want to maintain good health and fitness late into life, but I’m of the mind that good food and drink are part of the fun of the journey, and make decisions accordingly. Sometimes it’s just worth it.
Just as an fyi there has been a study done and if you are ever stranded somewhere the big fat guy outlives everybody. And not just because he eats everybody.
Tastes like chicken.
“If I stop eating everything, I’ll live until I die? Awesome.”
Let’s see if we can simplify and add lightness:
“I’ll live until I die. Awesome!”
This reminds me of a passage:
“Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day, but set fire to him and he’s warm for the rest of his life.” ― Terry Pratchett, Jingo
My partner got cancer about 8 years ago. Started looking into all these alternatives. We adopted some principles, but man that is no way to live.
They don’t guarantee that you’ll live longer, but it’ll certainly feel like it.
Every one lives until they die, and the damaged airplane will be guaranteed to make it to the scene of the crash.
Please!
They very much prefer that you call it an involuntary conversion.
That diet is healthy until you add the half a jar of dressing needed to make it edible on a daily basis. I love raw veggies but the only food I could exist on is pizza
It’s possible to live on just potatoes, but not especially enjoyable.
At a point, I just want to be happy and certain UNHEALTHY foods just make me happy. I’m not downing junk on the daily, we eat pretty healthy overall. But sometimes I just want Taco Bell.
I wonder do you actually live longer or like marriage you just feel like it is longer?
DT ignore this comment you will definitely live longer and healthier with She Who Will Not Be Named taking care of you. You were destined for an early grave and probably due to some weird jeep infection.
“Does this mean no more shower spaghetti?” –DT, probably
For those really trying to extend their lives on this [gestures broadly] place…why?
At this point I’m just hoping for a quick, painless death.
At times I’m glad I grew up in a Cold War total annihalation zone.
I’m mainly trying to avoid being caught in a “life” where my body isn’t capable of doing the things I enjoy for 40-50 years.
On that note it sucks having problems tying my shoes.
After two knee replacements, I’ve stuck with slip on shoes. Go ahead and rock some Vans or whatever floats your boat.
Of course your problem is likely not the same as mine, but if all you need to wear is tennies/sneakers/trainers, plenty of options.
Just saying a car web site provides many reasons for death that no diet can prevent. I slid of the road and down a 800 foot cliff and my car exploded but thanks to eating this new super food not only did I survive I got a fantastic tan. Subscribe to find out this new super food. It’s waffles
If you stop eating everything you like, it just feels like forever.
It’s not a review if it’s advertising? Got it.
We’re NOT reviewing these things.
Here’s a bunch of information, content, links, and free advertising for the things which we are NOT reviewing; just to be clear.
Well, this seems like an endorsement of all these products. Gonna have to read both those books, buy a 2018 Ram, order that head unit, get my motorcycle endorsement, buy a motorcycle, get the CarPlay thing, and go stand near an AFEELA.
You’re sure asking a lot of me, Matt.
Sacrifices must be made, Drew.
Fine. I’ll go stand near an AFEELA. But I’m not going to enjoy the live DJ or the exclusive giveaways.
I’ve actually stood near the AFEELA at Valley Fair. The Autopian sacrifice has been accomplished.
Pics posted on Discord awhile back.
Almost sounds like new billboard day
Pfft, AFEELA, you can’t eat that.
AFEELA 1. AFEELA 2. AFEELA 3. Then i got kicked out, because the gentlemans club has a ‘No a feelin’ policy.
After AFEELA 5 comes AFEELA BALBOA
You’re just lucky the bouncer didn’t AFEELA like kicking your butt.
AFEELA 2 Electric Boogaloo
AFEELA lotta bad puns around the Sonymobile incoming…
Is there a point to having a car play device on a bike? I just assume you could mount the actual phone in that spot.
I don’t know. I don’t ride motorcycles.
I was actually all for a review of the carplay bike think until you pointed out the phone mount… I guess not having to use your phone in all weather is nice, though wireless car play rips through battery life.
There are waterproof navigation units.
Honestly? Not really. Yeah, I suppose putting your phone on the handlebar is inelegant and requires a USB power source, but I have never felt compelled to add more tech to my riding experience. Certainly, a big screen is not something I’ve ever asked for on a motorcycle.
I have a phone holder attached to the FZ6R for the rare occasions I want to use nav while riding, but otherwise the phone stays in the cross-body bag where it won’t fall out. 🙂
So far I haven’t felt the need to use a USB charger with it, which simplifies things a bit.
Does it require USB power? I’m pretty sure my phone can play audio through a bluetooth connection for longer than I’d care to ride in a single stint (if I did ride).
I had a Harley with an iPod connector in one of the bags. There was no up front display, and I could control the basics from the hand controls. I curated the playlist and kept it on shuffle at all times – and it was perfectly fine.
Really the only frustration was when I wanted a cool song to play at a deafening level while pulling up to a meet and the random function kept pulling up songs that weren’t cool enough for the moment LOL
Bike?
Ace of Spades
They should call it Vigo…
Vigo the Carplaything
GodDAMMIT that’s GENIUS.
(Read in R. Lee Ermey voice)
* Intended for user on Gozer brand motorcycles.
“Is, ehhh, your bike a Gozer? Hey? Know what I mean? A Gozer? Wink wink nudge nudge!”