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Just got off the phone with John Detlor. Talked for about two hours. Super friendly. Nothing groundbreaking, of course. He admitted that everyone in the Seattle office assumed that Cooper survived (which seems obvious when you read the Vault files), but still nice to hear an agent admit that.

This whole conversation is missing the fact that new vehicle inventory is up 70% over last year as the supply chain recovers. For all types of cars. Having stock in hand is a normal part of how companies make sales. If you don't have stock customers will often migrate away from you to someone who does. The Cox report clearly states that EV sales are on track as predicted. This would be why the troll did not link to it. https://www.coxautoinc.com/news/cox-automotive-forecast-june-2023-u-s-auto-sales-forecast/ As the market begins to turn toward EVs one part of the supply chain is dragging their heels somewhat. The car dealers have not yet made the investments they will soon be forced into. https://www.coxautoinc.com/news/new-cox-automotive-study-ev-consideration-at-record-high-but-dealers-feel-unprepared/

Next he will be getting on board with that "if it's 10 seconds or less it's not really sexual assault" thing.

Disingenuous. A state to state comparison of gun ownership vs homicides, and a developed nation to nation comparison, both show a very clear correlation every year. Year to year comparisons are confounded by other factors, such as population demographics changing with time.

You just said a lot about yourself there. Yes, it’s a facile trope and easy to disavow — but you were the one who posted it. The very strong differentiation of black from white as a designator or slavery was a white invention. Slavery, no. Servitude by color, yeah. Not uniquely USian (the Iberian peninsula has a lot to answer for), but we codified the color barrier, and served as an example to the S Africans. Now that’s a proud legacy. And I guess it’s your feeling that as long as a single person is out there who agrees with you, they must be satisfied individually, but all those people who don’t, well, fuck ‘em Wendy P.

44745 will require cockpit voice recorders and flight data recorders. Part 135 pilot requirements include a requirement for check pilots, and oral/practical check rides every 6 months. See 135.265 for maximum duty time and required rest periods. Someone is going to have to keep training records and duty/rest records.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5LnjhbzRPg Going all the way back to the seventies my two greatest passions have been skydiving and the Grateful Dead. They're not everyone's cup of coffee, but I've known a lot of skydivers who love them as well. For a Father's Day present one of my daughters who lives in the Bay Area copped tickets for the very last show. The entire weekend, San Francisco was a wall to wall carnival of tie dyed old farts roaming around Haight St. and the SOMA district where Oracle Park is located. It was a special weekend for those of us who have grown up on the Dead. We lost Jerry Garcia along the way, but the music never stopped. Bob Weir and the guys promise they've got other things up their sleeves yet, but this was the end of an era.

You remind me of Trump, who took credit for ending the Birther conspiracy after using it for years. Up next - In 30 years Rich takes credit for ending climate change due to his support for EVs and renewables. To go through your list of strawmen one at a time: America is systemically racist. Parts are. We are getting better. Racism is unconscious. Nope. Homophily is unconscious. What you do with that determines whether or not you are a racist. If you pretend it doesn't exist - chances are, you are. Racism explains all discrepancies. Your dumbest strawman yet. Anti racist policy is needed to treat people unequally as individuals Nope. Anti-racism policies are needed to end racism. Pretty simple there. The same lame false conclusions. Given that you are the one making them - agreed.

Nothing says innocence like trying to hamstring your investigator.

I had a Raider-230 Nine Cell Canopy in the early 90's. I did about 40 jumps on it and had no Issues and the canopy was jumped quiet a few times after that. Eventually a few years later, it was hard to get a decent Flare out of it, especially in Nil wind Landings. It was gracefully and respectfully retired on a Bonfire to a lot of cheering :) Rodger

You should put this as a caption for all your posts. Sort of a sub rosa admission of Proud White Boys.

No you did not answer. Again, here it is: Explain exactly how this would work. Use real numbers, costs, loss of jobs, economic impacts. . . Never mind that. I had this discussion with him like 10 years ago. Back then he was saying that it would take GENERATIONS to get gun levels that low, but it's a start. Now he's saying 8 years, lmao. And He never addressed the point wrt who cares about waiting generations when we already had cut the homicide rate in half between 1994 ans 2014 despite doubling the amount of guns. We must've been doing something right. And even if we were able to cut the amount of guns in half, we'd still be at around 1994 numbers when the gun homicide rate was the highest, so why does he think anything would be better? Having said that, at 1994 numbers (200 million guns iirc) there is a possibility that we could've seen this rollercoaster of spikes in homicide rates every 20 years or so regardless of an increase in guns. (currently 400+ million) Perhaps 200 million is the magic number, and getting below that might render some positive results? But again, why bother when there are already proven programs in place, they just won't get the funding. They rather just make it political and try to take guns away from their conservative boogie men, and garner votes in the process.

Back to the war in Ukraine, I'm evolving. I now think we, and our allies, need to ramp it up and provide whatever Ukraine needs to punch through the defensive lines Russia painstakingly built. We need to not only supply ATACM's but we need to release the obligation to only use the weapons on Ukrainian soil. We all need to recognize that Russia will not attack Europe at this stage and so loosen up restrictions on held back munitions and weapons, especially air defense equipment and lots of it. If Ukraine doesn't have a real breakthrough success and soon support will likely falter. Timing, as ever, is the real game.

White conservatives have earned said prejudice. They put in a large violent and anti-democracy platform and actions to deserve it. The majority seem rather proud of it.

Correct, he's ignored a lot!

Hi Bill, Every journey begins with the first step. Jerry Baumchen

It will happen but may take decades to overcome the resistance of die hard gun owners. Decades to change the courts and the constitution. Until then the carnage will continue and the whole world will look upon the US with pity and disdain.

The Ovid Airport is available if someone wants to open a DZ for the 2024 season.

I realise my progression may seem overly conservative to a lot of people but this, conversely, seems a bit aggressive for my liking. I’ve never quite been on a 1.6 W/L but I certainly wouldn’t have trusted myself there at 250 jumps. Still, if you have a good coach and focus exclusively on canopy then maybe it’s not an issue.

I do remember these but it was at the very beginning of my jumping so I can't say that I had full understanding of the issues at the time. Here is what I can put together from my current understanding crossed with my spotty memories of that time. Keep in mind that this was around the time of transition from F-111 to ZP canopies. It was not uncommon for people to still buy F-111 canopies at least as their first canopy. The saber had been out for a while. Precision was building the Monarch. I'm trying to remember if the Stiletto was out yet but I don't think so at least not where I was at. Glide path needed a new canopy. They had been playing with a design called Ariel in various forms. I knew a big cameraman guy from canada that had been doing some test jumping for them and still had one of the prototypes. The Nova was another design that they were playing with. Paragliders were getting better and I once heard that the air foil was based on one? Rumor. CFD was getting better and I heard that they had hired a consultant to help them with the new design. Rumor. What I actually know. One of our instructors went off to Quincy and jumped a bunch of their demos that year. He came back to Texas and we got a couple in that he and others were jumping. For Glide path they were supposed to be the hot new canopy better then the Saber. I don't think I jumped any of them. They were out side my skill set at the time. But I remember that Scot liked them. I packed them for him and he had good openings then one bad one. It of course happened when he was shooting video Which was a lot more chalenging back then when the cameras weighed over 7 lb. I'm trying to remember if he bought one but he got sick with ball cancer and quit jumping. No one considered them to be bad canopies. There were no problems with them around here. Then there were a couple of incidents. High profile very public incidents, I think in FL but I don't recall which drop zone. Collapse on approach to landing, possible turbulence. Suddenly people started to get gun shy of them. Glide Path went into panic mode and recalled them. I'm not sure if they ever really came to a conclusion as to the root cause of the issues on those canopies. And I don't think it was wide spread. There were not a lot of them out there but they were out there and people liked them and were not dieing. They didn't have flares like most of there canopies. I heard that the tape they put in the bottom seam to spread the load was shrinking and distorting the airfoil. Rumor. Line shrinkage was not a widely known concept at the time and I have heard since then that the collapses were caused by them going out of trim. Rumor. I don't recall it having a nose on it like you see on many canopies today. PD had some kind of patent on how they sewed their nose lip, I recall that later Flight Concepts was trying to work around that in their construction on newer canopies. I've heard theories that the issues were with how the canopy pitched front to back, when a canopy surges forwards it loses lift on the front of the canopy and the front can roll under. I herd that this was a product of the airfoil, the max thickness being farther back then on other canopies. Rumor. None of it really mattered. They pulled the cutaway handle. I don't know if there was a lawsuit or just the fear of one but Mike Furry got out. He was done. Some of the other people there went on to buy him out and start over with a, legally, unrelated company, Flight Concepts. They went on to build many good canopies including CRW canopies. They have kind of fallen off the stage as far as sky diving is concerned which is a shame. I don't think there was any thing special about the Nova. It was just another of the post Saber ZP nine cells. It was an early attempt at a "high performance canopy" and it seemed to be a good canopy but I don't think it would be any thing to write home about to day except for the mystique that has grown up around it. I wound up with one years later. A 170 or maybe a 190 I think. Too big for me never jumped it. I was surprised how many people were interested in it. Gave it to a CRW guy that was smart enough not to jump it in turbulence and he never had a problem with it. I think he sold it to his DZO, lost track of it sense then. I think people blow them out of proportion both their porformance and there problems. If you want to jump it, I'd say do it. I'd advise you to play with it up high testing it's stability. I'd advise against jumping it on a turbulent day. But if it behaved up high I would probable land it. See what the fuss is about but I think I think that you will find that there is no fuss and if you a sencable about where and when you jump it I don't think you will be in any real danger. Lee