Congrats to the Eagles of Philadelphia for winning the Super Bowl. If you’re an Eagles fan, it was a great game. The same is true if you’re a fan of the pass rush. The biggest winners? Haters. It was the hater Super Bowl. If you don’t like the Chiefs, Mahomes, Taylor Swift, or Drake then you had quite a good time.
Jeep, too, embraced the hate a little. Recognizing that the brand has been in the other kind of bowl lately, Jeep threw a little shade at Ford by using the other kind of Ford in one of only two car ads. The company did go out of its way, however, to not make a political statement. It was neither pro-EV nor anti-EV. It was pro-choice. Wait, not that kind of pro-choice!
It’s a different world out there, and one without long-time car hauler Jack Cooper. After being dropped by Ford, GM also dropped the carrier. Why? No one is quite saying, though there’s one obvious theory.
The European Union will be the host to more American football games, which will be super exciting to watch if there’s a trade war. It sounds like the EU is already looking to lower tariffs on cars and buy more stuff to avoid the hassle. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is trying to avoid the hassle of driverless car regulation by focusing his driverless car empire on Texas. Perhaps getting what you want isn’t always great.
Just ask the people in Philly whose job it is to put the light poles back up.
Freedom Is ‘Yes, Or No, Or Maybe’
The guy who makes the ads for Stellantis is Olivier Francois. You might know him as the marketing exec behind Eminem’s “Made In Detroit” ad or Clint Eastwood’s post-recession “Halftime in America.”
His ads all feel a certain way and, about five seconds into Harrison Ford’s Jeep Super Bowl spot I knew it was a Francois joint. He might have been born in Paris, but he speaks American. Specifically, he has an understanding of the zeitgeist that allows him to put a lot of words in the mouth of someone else without saying too much.
It’s so easy to parody that the TV show Detroiters did a bit where a Detroit-based ad awards show’s biggest award was a competition between various companies all using Eminem for a very Francois-style “Detroit is back”-message (side note, the Detroiters guys also had the best Super Bowl ad).
The two-minute ad yesterday was full of imagery of Jeeps marching across Europe (I think) in pursuit of Nazis. There were soldiers. There were mountains. There was Harrison Ford pointing out that freedom is “Yes, or no, or maybe,” which is a good summation of the Jeep approach to electrification.
“Yes” is the briefly seen Jeep Recon. “Maybe” is the 4xe plug-in hybrid. “No” is everything else, I suppose.
What’s amazing is that this ad wasn’t supposed to happen. According to this detailed piece from Variety, Stellantis Chairman John Elkann decided at the last minute, post-Carlos Tavares, to do a Super Bowl ad. At this point, there weren’t 30 seconds to be had, so the idea of making a two-minute ad was “pure madness” according to Francois. Even worse, the company’s idea for a funny script didn’t land with Ford, who said he didn’t need the money or have the time.
According to this article, Francois went back with something a little more serious and inspirational. Ford agreed. The two minutes also became available after the California wildfires led some potential advertisers to pull back.
After a lot of work, what we end up with is something that’s trying very hard to not be political, other than implying you don’t need to be friends with someone to wave at them. This is on purpose:
Now all Francois had to hope the commercial pleases and inspires rather than rankles. He acknowledges some people may see it as touching on politics — something he hopes to avoid. The ad will only succeed “if politics are removed from the question. I’m not sure they will,” he adds, because determining how different groups of consumers will react to a commercial created so quickly is difficult. The ad could be accused of backing away from hard-sell for EVs or lumped in with environmental concerns, both of which, he says, “are bull—-.”
“Look, I need to sell a little bit of everything,” says Francois. “I still have a lot of love for electric, but “I need to say something that people will connect with.”
That was a sort of theme of this year’s Super Bowl, as well. The NFL even went so far as to remove “END RACISM” from the endzone, because ending racism was too… political, I guess? It doesn’t matter, because Snoop and Tom Brady ended racism with their ad. Brady celebrated the victory by buying a watch made of Adamantium.
There’s a way to view Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show as the actual highlight of the Super Bowl. It was, artistically, a masterpiece. If you could give a Nobel prize for halftime shows you’d give it to Kendrick. In that way, Los Angeles won a small part of the game.
Was it political, though? I’m not so sure. The tableau of red, white, and blue dancers felt like something, but it was notably non-specific.
Haters, though. The haters loved it. Kendrick Lamar yet again bodied Drake by having an entire crowd yell “a minor” during “Not Like Us.” Jeep even got in on the fun with a dig of its own, both showing a Bronco and having Harrison Ford end the spot with “This Jeep makes me happy…. even though my name is Ford.”
It was a good joke, even if it was a reminder that Jeep once had this off-roader space almost to itself before the new Bronco arrived. This was definitely noticed by some at Ford.
Why Did Ford And GM Cut Hauler Jack Cooper?
Jack Cooper was formed as a car-hauling company in 1928, serving GM’s plant in Missouri. Since then, it’s been one of the largest car haulers for OEMs in North America. In particular, Ford and GM both used Jack Cooper for much of its hauling.
Now the company will likely not make it to its 100th birthday. What happened?
Curiously, both GM and Ford seem to acknowledge that the company did a good job. GM gave Jack Cooper numerous Supplier of the Year awards, and Ford said it had no issues with the performance.
There are two competing theories out there, and I’m not sure it’s just one or the other. First, Jack Cooper is unionized with the Teamsters. When Ford announced the move, the union immediately cried foul. From the Detroit Free Press:
Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien called Ford’s move “shameful” and “un-American” in a statement, adding that, “By taking steps to end its relationship with Jack Cooper, the Ford Motor Company has officially threatened the livelihoods of more than 1,400 Teamsters-represented car haul workers and their families. Ford, a once iconic American brand, wants to boost its own bottom line by walking away from a family-owned company and into the arms of second-rate third parties that will pay workers less money and far fewer benefits to haul Ford vehicles.”
After spending a ton of money electrifying their fleets, automakers are looking for places to cut, and car shipping is an obvious target. The article above mentions another issue:
According to a source familiar with Ford’s decision, the move to terminate the contract is not related to union representation or the hauler’s performance, which it has satisified. Rather, Jack Cooper’s history of financial distress and instability — it filed for federal bankruptcy protection in 2019 — has been among Ford’s concerns, this person said. The person asked to not be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
The hauling industry is tough, with huge booms and busts in both demand and shipping capacity. Jack Cooper tried to renegotiate rates with its customers, including GM, but instead, GM decided to pull its business, effectively dooming Cooper.
EU States It Will Lower Some Car Tariffs
Sometimes bluster works! President Trump has variously threatened/promised tariffs against many other countries, though he’s only instituted some of them. The European Union was presumably next, but the body’s trade reps are already implying that they might be able to make some room on auto tariffs, which currently stand at 10% for most vehicles.
Here’s what trade committee head Bernd Lange told the Financial Times:
“We can try to have a deal before escalating costs and tariffs,” Lange said. The bloc would offer to buy more liquefied natural gas and military equipment from the US, “plus also look to lower tariffs for cars”
President Trump has signaled that he wants a 2.5% tariff, Lange thinks they can get “closer” to that number. Does this mean we’ll see Hummers in Europe? Probably not. Some of the biggest recipients of this kind of deal would likely be European companies that already export to Europe like BMW, Volvo, and especially Mercedes.
Tesla And The Danger Of Getting What You Want
Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a big bet on a Trump presidency and he won that bet. His next big wager is that his cars are good enough at self-driving that they’ll be able to do a task that companies like Waymo think requires a lot of expensive sensors with more processing power and no LIDAR.
Those two things are related. Musk needs the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to back off and allow it to field robotaxis, which it probably will now. Musk also needs a place to test them out and, hey, now that it’s a Texas company why not do it in a state that’s allergic to regulation:
Nothing in Texas law would stop Tesla from launching a robotaxi service. The state takes a hands-off regulatory approach that aligns with Musk’s increasingly anti-government political stances as an advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump.
State law allows autonomous-vehicle companies free access to public streets provided they are registered and insured, like any human-driven car, and equipped with technology to record data about any potential crashes. No state agency issues permits for or oversees driverless-taxi services — and state law forbids cities and counties from enacting their own driverless-vehicle regulations.
If Musk makes this work, then it’s a big convenience to be able to settle in Austin and he’ll make another trillion dollars.
What if it doesn’t work? Sometimes guardrails are there to limit you from accessing some place you want to go. Sometimes they’re there to stop you from driving over a cliff. This is the concern I have. Alex Roy and Joel Johnson have been doing cross-country runs in FSD and found it to be something that works most of the time. Where it doesn’t work as well? In bad weather. Austin, having lived there for a number of years, gets a lot of bad weather.
Maybe they’ve got it all worked out, or maybe we’ll learn how much Austinites can stand to be beta testers.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
We need more guitars. This is my hot take. More guitars. Here’s Chloe Slater doing her song “Sucker” and, mostly notable, there’s a lot of guitar. I like it. Guitars!
The Big Question
If you watched the big game, what was the best ad? The worst ad?
I can’t really point to any ad last night that I thought was particularly good, especially comparing to classic Super Bowl ads of the past.
However, I can definitively say that the worst ads were the ones with the horrifying CG mashups of humans and something non-human. I think there were at least three, and every single one of those nightmares will haunt me for a long time. Aside from the body horror aspect of it, it wasn’t even effective advertising because I have no idea what they were pushing. I was too busy searching for the brain bleach to pay attention.
Seal as a seal will be burned into the dark recesses of my brain forever
Alternative take: Seal as a seal was the best ad of the night. I will remember it. Who cares if you had no idea it was a Mountain Dew ad until the end. It was horrific in just the right way to sear it into your memory. I thought the majority of the one with Harrison Ford was dumb and unmemorable, but i will remember it just because of how he delivered the whispered “Ford” line at the end.
I had no idea it was a Mountain Dew ad until you said so. The horrifying visuals completely overshadowed the product being advertised.
Also, now I kind of want to boycott Mountain Dew. 😉
The visual pun of it all was just…. *chef’s kiss*
“…you don’t need to be friends with someone to wave at them.”
Clipping this short bit, because this is part of Southern US culture.
When I moved here to North Carolina in the 90s, I didn’t understand why everyone would wave or lift a finger or two off the wheel in a friendly gesture while driving, or wave from the roadside/porch/front yard.
A kind friend finally explained that it’s twofold: the wave says, “hey there!”. Makes sense – there’s a lot of friendly people in the Old North State.
The second meaning, and this especially goes for driving in unfamiliar places – we see you. An acknowledgement. Folks sitting on porches do that as you drive by, saying yep, we’re nice, but we know you aren’t from here, and we know you’re here.
Most folks I’ve met who do the latter, if I respond with a wave, they’re quite kind, even if I’m originally from “up the road”. I may get some ribbing about it which is fine – more often than not I’m treated with kindness and respect if I give that as well. Only had a few instances where I felt less than welcome.
TL;DR version – I fully concur and there’s a good reason why, but here it’s more social awareness vs politics. Not as commonplace in cities to see the wave anymore, but in smaller communities, people still do it, driving or not, and it’s expected that you’ll acknowledge them too.
They were referencing the “Jeep Wave”.
When Jeep owners wave at other Jeep owners to acknowledge they’re in the same club. It’s not unique to them but they’re quite vocal about it being part of the Jeep culture.
yep, the Jeep Wave, fully understand. But in the greater social context, especially the sentence I referenced, this is not just about the Jeep Wave. If there was a statement that was being made in this ad, this may help point to it – we don’t have to agree or even know one another to show a gesture of acknowledgement.
I have a neighbor from North Carolina… we were talking about stuff. He had two takes that stuck with me about racism… First, he acknowledged the confederate flag was probably about more than slavery to the older generations, but, as he put it, “fucking yankees flying it is 100% racist.” Second, he said “A lot of parents raised their sons to be bigots. But they also raised them to be Southern gentlemen. Can’t these white trash just shut their mouths and be polite once in a while?”
It’s the ones that wave with guns in their hands that worry me.
Brady celebrated the victory by buying a watch made of Adamantium.
No, because that would have been actually cool.. Even a near 7 figure Richard Mille, of which I’m pretty sure Brady owns would have been acceptable (though still stupid money for a watch you can hardly read). The utter trash that is a Jacob & Co. watch is just a peek into who Brady really is, did he buy the watch with the PPP loan he got, or the charity money he bilked? First place a hip hop artist goes with his first (and maybe last) contract money is to give Jacob &Co. $250K to get a $8K Rolex covered in diamonds rejected from Kay’s, netting J&Co. a neat $240K profit.
That thing has strong “$9.99 from Temu” vibes.
Was it vegan adamantium though? Hasn’t Hugh Jackman been through enough?
Budweiser. Bud won the ad thing.
Here to support More Guitars!
While my garage is a space-constrained balance of fun-yet-practical vs practically fun, the guitar fleet reflects no such restraint.
Dang. No mention of the Indycar ads?? Loved seeing racing get exposure during the game.
Jeep may not be overtly political. Jeep does have to understand they exist in 2024, and the Overton Window of what is now politics is a glass gorilla exhibit. It’s ultimately a symptom of our current “Culture War”. Because anything can become political, everything will become political. Even choosing to not be political is getting pretty political. The Machine demands you play the game, because that’s the game we’re now playing.
Is it possible to not be political, sure. Reese’s lava commercial was unlikely a commentary on great societies impact. But, we’re not really in a place where you can throw up a flag, talk about freedom. Hell even throwing in Harrison Ford. Then say “I’m not being political.”
Which becomes problematic because, I don’t think they were trying to be political at all. The message seems to be “Buy a Jeep”. Which if your using images within the Window, and not controlling the narrative. The person outside the exhibit gets to fill in the message how they please. And that may not be in Jeep’s best interest.
So, good luck to all marketing firms going forward. Maybe stick to the possibly one non-political figure in America: Post Malone.
Post Malone is deep in the pocket of Big Tattoo.
Ho Malone?
I saw some Post Malone Oreos yesterday at the store. Surprisingly they don’t taste like cigarette ash and stale beer which is what I picture with him.
Jesus. Is this what we’re reduced to in 2025? Celebrity cookies? (I just checked them out and they do look pretty tasty, but still a nope)
pssst – this is 2025 🙂
Dang it. These years they just keep changing!
Are you telling me the Overton window now encompasses Contemporary Malone as well? What about Malone Nouveau? Malone Deco?
That would be Bugsy Malone.
Well played.
For that matter Sam Malone
Wait till you find out what they did to Brutalist Malone! There’s a whole three and half hour movie about it!
In Soviet arthouse, Malone brutalizes you.
My #1 issue with FSD in anything is this:
Think about how the unwashed masses maintain their vehicles. From bald tires to metal on metal brakes to worn suspension that won’t react the way the programming expects it to.
Sure, you can put sensors on SOME of those things, but they have a high failure rate in any area that sees regular winters. What are you gonna do? Immobilize the car if it loses a single sensor? Force maintenance on owners? Both of these would be cause for revolt from owners.
FSD is not a human and is limited in it’s scope to play with unexpected variables. We already see it with inclement weather.
So maybe it’s great, maybe it all initially works. Then these cars get a few years old and the maintenance starts to slip. I’m betting error rates, and thus traffic incidents, climb.
I don’t have a Tesla, but I do have a car with hands-free cruise control on the freeways. In very inclement weather (and it does have to be VERY inclement, such as snow covering all road markings, ice covering the sensors, or extraordinarily dense fog), a simple dashboard alert pops up that the auto-steering system isn’t available due to inclement weather, and the car just drives like a normal car. That’s fine with me as I never use any cruise control in that sort of weather anyway.
Even very heavy rain doesn’t seem to bother it.
I haven’t had the system experience a failed sensor, but I’d imagine the response is basically the same, pop up on the dash the system has some kind of error and to have it serviced. A failed sensor dedicated to the semi-autonomous cruise does not immobilize the car.
In a similar vein, I have experienced overly aggressive emergency braking though. A car was stopped ahead of me, the car beeped with an alert, I lightly tapped the brakes (with plenty of time to stop safely), and the car interpreted that light tap as “DEFCON 5: CAR STOP NOW” and it fully locked all four wheels, bypassing ABS entirely. The car did in fact stop nearly in place, but it felt like hitting a wall and you could smell the tire smoke. I generally like having that system turned on, but it has had a couple of needlessly-aggressive moments.
I’m referring to Tesla’s plan. Where the cars won’t have steering wheels or a way to take over at all.
The system works now because you are the backup for when it fails. Because humans are able to process the situation in ways the car can’t.
Yeah that’s fair, though Level 5 autonomy (where there are no manual controls inside the vehicle) isn’t just a Tesla construct. I guess a great case study would be how the Waymo cars (which are Level 4 autonomous where the car drives itself in most situations, but still has physical controls for a human driver to be in control) handle snow.
Jeep should have saved the marketing money and invested it in engineering and quality control.
It feels a lot like if Coke did an ad, but at the same time customers were also finding dead rats inside 10% of all bottles.
It’s gonna take a lot more money that these superb owl ads cost to take care of the engineering and QC for stellantis.
Tesla FSD is 85% there. It’s a superb cruise control at the present. That last 15% for weather is a hard issue. It’s no lines or hard to read lines that are issues. Humans used to snow driving can generally tell where the edge of an unplowed road is despite not seeing pavement. FSD can’t yet do that.
My favorite commercial was the NFL flag football commercial. A young black woman showing up a bunch of young white men trying to gatekeep “their” game was great to see. And, Samuel L. Jackson as Uncle Sam was a masterpiece.
As cringe as I found it and as much as I like to give modern Jeep shit I think it was an ad that played to their strengths and likely riled up their core audience. For better and worse Jeep as a brand is inherently political and uniquely American. Their vehicles played a big role in helping the country throughout many conflicts, both of the “necessary” variety (WWII) and the “military industrial complex go brrrr tee hee” variety (Vietnam).
The brand will always be tied to that, so I don’t blame them for milking it for all its worth. They also put American flags on the side of all of their vehicles now, so it’s not like they don’t relish in it. But I also think they did a good job of not overtly throwing red meat to the MAGA crowd by making sure one of their (bad lol) PHEVs was front and center and by delivering the “hey it’s okay to Jeep wave to anyone my dudes, even if you disagree with them!”
Anyway it seems like mission accomplished for them and the brand desperately needs several shots in the arm, so maybe this will be one of them. I find a lot of the mild jingoism they deploy to be pretty cringy but even as a leftist I’m going to continue to root for American automakers to succeed because…why wouldn’t I?
Me thinks you are thinking too hard about it all. It’s a Jeep. There isn’t all that much more to it. Chicks dig the white ones. Dude’s dig the dirty ones. It’s not that complicated.
My female friends don’t care if it’s white or not. They love the culture, especially the ducking craze right now.
But they mostly love that they are “driving a tank” and can run over curbs like there’s no tomorrow. I guess that’s one way to learn how to park.
None of them do their own maintenance, so there is no downside to their vehicles in their minds, beyond fuel economy.
I liked the “real hero’s are humble” line
I contended that any company wasting that much money on an ad will be belly-up by the end of the year.
.
.
.
.
Then the breast cancer awareness ad came on.
Apple’s ad in 1984 cost $5.3 million inflation adjusted, 40 years later, they’re doing mostly OK
I’ve seen people on both sides of the political divide claim the Jeep ad as agreeing with them so mission accomplished?
On the other hand it’s hard not to interpret “The revolution will be televised, you picked the right time but the wrong guy” as anything but a political statement. Fox’s subtitles reversing it to “…the wrong time for the right guy” wins the night’s Task Failed Successfully award.
It’s getting ever more difficult for the ruling class to get the public to believe yet more star-spangled bullshit. This commercial did so masterfully during an event that is one of the most propaganda-ridden and consumer-driven ever that has tens of millions of Americans gormlessly staring at their glowing rectangle of choice. Edward Bernays, Walter Lippmann, and Joseph Goebbels would all be proud.
I don’t know about all that. My TV is pretty sweet.
How dare you speak of Puppy Bowl in such a derisive tone.
I’ve seen multiple interpretations of “right time but the wrong guy.” The first is that the wrong guy was Trump, and the statement is aimed at his voters. The second was that Lamar himself is the wrong guy, as in if you expect him to pick a fight with Trump at the Super Bowl halftime show, you were incorrect.
Given much of the other symbolism involved in the show (Samuel L Jackson as Uncle Sam, er perhaps Uncle Tom), I lean towards the former.
I interpreted “real hero’s are humble” as a shot at Trump
Ummm, you mean the World??
If my backup camera is any indication that relying on cameras for FSD is stupid, I don’t know what will.
Hey Francois, how ’bout you go back to France, sit down in Paris
I’ll tear apart your ads and I’ll show you the errors
Of your ways, sure it pays like a vin, but it’s a sin
To come show us how to do it, now where do I begin?
You call him Dr. Jones like a lady, we get unstable like Haiti
The beef with Kendrick and Drake are more like Shmendrik and Fake
Compared to what I’ll be bringing, like Dre I keep their heads ringing
Like Ringling, there’s a sucker born every minute, now wait….
You think you show us what’s hot, you just choke like the Bills
The weak-ass TV movie version of Monsieur Tocqueville
The American experiment on the back of a Jeep?
Jingoism is cheap, your cinematography’s weak
And I find your use of cliche somewhat artistically bleak.
/politely hands mic to Francois
COTD or it’s broken
Any bets on whether the 25% tariff on all steel and aluminum goes through today?
100% yes. He did it before, and it really impacts Canada, now cue him being surprised that Canada does retaliatory tariffs on the value of the steel/aluminum ones.
Going through like a Big Mac and a bucket of KFC…MAGA? /s
I’m just glad we could all get together as a country (or as a bunch of people who could afford Super Bowl tickets), to boo Tay Tay. Presumably over her carbon footprint.
Eagles fans were booing her, not everyone. Eagles fans know Taylor wants to be climbing greased light poles in a Jalen Hurts jersey after hitting the beer funnel for the 11th time at the championship parade like the true Eagles fan she is.
Unfortunately, everyone makes sacrifices for relationships.
I watched the game and the best ads are the ones I remember less than 24 hours later, so in no particular order:
Indiana Jeep and Last Crusade
RAM and the three bears
Bud Light and a smoker that also cuts grass.
For all the suckers that spent $8 million for 30 seconds, try again next year.
Agreed. The Bud Light ad was hilarious, but no commercial is going to make me drink nasty light beer.
“Brady celebrated the victory by buying a watch made of Adamantium.”
Nice Swatch.
I did not watch the game. I and my small circle have zero interest in any sportsball, so much so I was blissfully unaware this was even the weekend for the Superb Owl.
You seem fun.
Thanks. I am. I just have better ways to spend my time than watching millionare rapists and animal abusers move a ball around a field.
So judging people as a broad swipe is clearly the mark of a hilarious hang, how high and mighty of you.
I have a cousin like you, he’s pretty dull.
Well here’s the list: Whoops looks like I forgot the murderers, drug dealers, fraudsters, racketeers, burglers, counterfeiters, assaulters, drunk drivers, kiddie rapists, etc:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professional_sportspeople_convicted_of_crimes
Lots and lots of millionaire sportsball players on there including my personal favorite the dog strangler Michael Vick.
Those are only the convictions. Only they, God and the victims know how much more they’ve gotten away with. Like for example OJ Simpson.
But if watching those kinds of folks move a ball around a field is your thing and you don’t mind adding to their hush money slush fund you do you.
So you are a racist AND a nerd? Got it. That’s a true double-threat!
That’s cool and all, but if you want to hate on athlete’s because you were never one…or you don’t like people that have physical abilities better than you, you can just say that part.
It doesn’t change the fact that you are full of horrible thoughts. You have claimed over the years on this site to be some sort of progressive activist, and it turns out you have outed yourself as just a straight-up asshole fraud. You say one thing one time, and in the same breath type the opposite.
No one can take a word of what you say seriously, now. You should be embarrassed. For real.
Racist? Try again.
Nerd? Perhaps but less so than the sportsball nerds. They’re as nerdy as any cosplaying Trekkie, Harry Potter or Star Wars convention attendee with a closet full of unopened 40 yo action figures.
Bro, just surrender.
To what?
Use of the word “sportsball” is a great heuristic for identifying insufferable assholes. It’s that implication of “I’m too good for something that the vast majority of people enjoy and I need to let you know about it”. Hasn’t failed me yet!
Get over yourself. Sportsball is simply a catchall for sports that involve a ball.
See above, You lost. You should in fact change your name to “Insufferable Bastard”.
I’ll pray for you.
Good grief. Thanks for the thoughts, but I don’t need them. You are one strange dude.
Well you’re certainly entitled to your opinion.
What’s your perjorative term for badminton?
Lessee, sportshuttlecock is kinda clunky.
Maybe sportscock?
I did not watch the game. I usually do watch just for the spectacle and the ads, but I was sad this year about the Lions’ injuries and their eventual loss.
Everyone should watch the Detroiters and I Think You Should Leave.
Hard disagree. I found I Think You Should Leave to be one of the least funny shows I have ever seen. Virtually every sketch was the main guy screaming as the punchline. No thanks.
You’re not part of the Turbo Team!
I don’t think ITYSL is really a ‘punchline’ kind of show … there are some, I guess, but it is really for those of us who relish the long cringe angle, I think? Although I find myself rolling on the floor laughing at that show, I understand that it is profoundly un-funny to others. So your mileage will definitely vary. And this door definitely opens both ways, trust me.
I agree- there isn’t a punchline. That isn’t the point. My husband doesn’t like most of the skits, which is fine. But I have a stricker on the inside cover of my work notebook that is the really long text about Brian’s fucking hat. And it still makes me laugh after a couple of years.
2.5% is fair, given that our tariff is 2.5%
However, we still need to get rid of the jealousy tariff 25% for trucks.
I’m OK with an across the board 2.5% tariff for everyone on everything. It’s enough to generate revenue without creating much of a drag on trade.
There still needs to be a De Minimis exception for shipments too low of value to waste time collecting tariffs on. Also, I’m OK with anyone increasing tariffs to offset direct and indirect subsidies that give producers an unfair advantage. Examples, China has tariffs on US soybeans because we subsidize our farmers (and Trump pissed of the Chinese in 2018). The EU has tariffs on Chinese built EVs because their subsidies are much greater than the EU gives locally built EVs.
Punitive tariffs, like the 25% tax on trucks, need to go away.
A major problem with tariffs (other than the way they make the poor pay much, much more in taxes than the wealthy) is that everyone has a different idea of what’s fair and what’s justified when it comes to exclusions and increases.
What constitutes an unfair industry subsidy? Lower minimum wage? Looser environmental protections? Government paid health insurance? Direct subsidies to producers or consumers? Government guaranteed purchase contracts?
One man’s unfair advantage is another man’s critical industry. You can’t level a playing field if it’s made up of 15 million little segments, all of different sizes and shapes, and all tilted at different angles.
Whitechapel has three:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCwsDdVEu-c
Archspire has two, but it feels like three and half:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Auef08ml1j0
I thought Acacia Strain had three, but it’s actually just two. They are included because I’m still sick so my brain is firing slow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PWUxQS-ymI
The Acacia Strain’s drummer, Matt Guglielmo, is an insane person. He filled in for Better Lovers at a few of their gigs, most notably BLismas and in two nights played over 50 unique songs. And these are not your average pop songs. He played two sets with Better Lovers, one set with Acacia Strain and one set with End over the weekend. I was at that BLissmas weekend and was in awe of his ability.
If you haven’t seen them live, make it happen.
I dunno if periphery still has 3 but they usually do. Kvelertak as well, which is funny because they’re just a black metal tinged punk band. Not guitars but I think Kylesa deserves a mention for their double drummers
I did watch the big game, and was pleasantly surprised to see how evenly matched Team Fluff and Team Ruff were.
The best ads were for the individual players to be adopted from the various organizations that participated.
I agree, and in that case Subaru’s new ad was an excellent runner-up. I’m not a parent, but when the mama dog made that face at having to play the puppy’s favorite song again for what must have been the 50th time, I could feel it.
““Look, I need to sell a little bit of everything,” says Francois. “
Honestly, I was caught off guard when this quote wasn’t attributed to a Stellantis Representative.
Showing Jeeps going into battle in WWII is a political statement in todays climate because you have one side giving their salute on stage behind the Presidential podium.
“We may have been fighting the wrong enemy all along.” ~General Patton
The Germans did say Patton was the most German of the Allied leadership…
Touche.
Was thinking the same thing. In the 40’s we fought fascists, now we let them run amok in government.
They’ve been running amok in the USA long before Hitler ever took power.
Back it up a decade. In my high school world history class, I never understood how Germany went from a democracy (most people forget Hitler was elected) to totalitarianism, seemingly in the blink of an eye (or, apparently 53 days if what I read recently was accurate). Now life’s teaching me the not-understood part of that lesson in person.
Back then, the saying was those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it. The more modern take is history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. More accurate, perhaps, but missing the allegory.
Regardless of one’s political affiliation, I think we can all agree we’re in for a wild ride.
Absolutely!
This didn’t happen overnight, even though it may seem that way to a segment of the population that can’t or refuse to look passed their partisan blindspots.
The USA has been an authoritarian nation pretending to be a Democracy for a VERY long time. People believed the theatre. But just as Frank Zappa predicted…
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
The total truth turns on very fine details, and what you say here isn’t exactly correct. Hitler was NEVER elected as the primary leader of the country. He was APPOINTED to a chancellorship by the President, who was a pretty weak person and allowed Hitler to do many things outside of his authority.
Hitler dedicated many many years to growing his following, including time in jail for a failed putche and running a well known bully gang known as the Brown Shirts. The Weimar Republic was not heavily supported by the German people in general. It was never fully supported following WWI and there were many people in Germany who thought that a return to the Second Reich was the superior option. Additionally, many members highly placed in the Weimar Republic were previously highly placed in the Second Reich, which increased the instability of the government, making a takeover by Hitler more possible.
Read the Risk and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Schirer. You will see that despite any similarities drawn between Trump and Hitler, the world, and our country, are not in the same place that Germany was when Hitler took power.
Hence the “but it often rhymes”.
And by your description, that would apparently make Elon the appropriate analog…
Many thanks for correcting the history. Anyone who suggests we are reliving 1930’s German in the USA today, uh, well I’ll charitably say they don’t appear to know very much about 1930’s Germany.
1930s Germany was very much inspired by post-Civil War 1800s USA.
and 1920s USA!
Look a little farther afield.
As an example, Ukraine is a pretty good parallel to the Spanish Civil War, where instead of the Germans working out blitzkrieg tactics, the Ukrainians are teaching us all about drone warfare. It’s not a 100% match of course, but eerily similar, right down to the rapid development of new warfare technologies and arms buildup across the globe.
I’m not saying the US is exactly mirroring Nazi Germany – I’m saying there is a lot of similarity across the planet between the world as it looks now versus how everything looked in the late 1920s and 1930s.
It really isn’t. The roots of the conflicts are quite different, and wars developing new technologies and doctrines for using them is the norm, not a special exception.
Again, there really isn’t. The 1920’s and 1930’s were a far, far more multi-polar time. If you need to draw historical analogies, the heyday of the Roman Republic is a much better parallel, plus you even get Dictator as a job title instead of an insult.
You’re not wrong. The specifics and the individual causes are unique every time.
That said, I see forests, you see specific species of trees – again, to me it’s the rhyme, not the repeat.
I think a lot depends on how much one wants to generalize and how detailed one wants to be. I look up on the world today and think “Haven’t we been here before”. You look at that and (correctly) say “eh, not exactly”.
I can respect that.
Read it 3 times between age 9 and 11.
Maybe “not in the same place.”
But definitely feeling the Big Dictator Energy still. YMMV of course.
I highly recommend watching this to help fill in those blanks:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BjmpMY22lqg
Its a dramatization of the book “Paris 1919” about the Paris peace accords and how that clusterfuck set up the dominoes for much of the rest of the 20th century including Germany’s decent into facism, hyperfueled antisemitism, WWII (which many consider to be the second act of the 1914-1945 world war with a 20 year intermission), Vietnam, the Middle East conflicts and beyond.
Really? Do you think anything has changed in 20 years? Because it hasn’t, and if you feel that NOW is some sort of fascist emergence…I hear that New Coke is tasty.
In the 40s we had plenty of facists right here at home. Had things been a bit different we might have sided with Germany in their fight against Bolsheviks and “The International Jew”
“The Business Plot, also called the Wall Street Putsch and the White House Putsch, was a political conspiracy in 1933, in the United States, to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install Smedley Butler as dictator. Butler, a retired Marine Corps major general, testified under oath that wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans’ organization with him as its leader and use it in a coup d’état to overthrow Roosevelt. In 1934, Butler testified under oath before the United States House of Representatives Special Committee on Un-American Activities (the “McCormack–Dickstein Committee”) on these revelations. Although no one was prosecuted, the congressional committee final report said, “there is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_International_Jew