I discovered a type of vehicle mania I like. My piece this week is about the growing number of Americans importing 25 year old tiny Japanese "Kei" pickup trucks to do actual pickup truck work, for much less than a giant luxury American pickup costs:
Daniel Knowles
6,760 posts
Daniel Knowles
@dlknowles
Midwest correspondent @TheEconomist. Before that, in London, Mumbai, Nairobi and DC. Author of Carmageddon: shorturl.at/BJOUV [email protected]
- The sniggering here is so revealing. Red state Americans literally do not realise how much more violent their states are, certainly than New York and the West CoastFinally, a Democrat calls out a Republican on the truth about crime rates -- violent crime rates are higher in Oklahoma than New York and Californa. This will be fact checked. #okgovdebate
00:00 - The same mistakes are being made all over the world, over and over againToday Alexandria ๐ช๐ฌ finished construction on widening an urban highway and building a new highway overpass over a prime public beach. "Officials say this project is necessary to end traffic congestion, especially during the summer when large numbers of tourists visit." ๐คก
- I have a theory to explain this, and it is that wages are rising fast at the bottom and a lot of people basically resent paying more for once-cheap labour, and hate feeling like their status has been undermined by shrinking inequalityHereโs something interesting in the FT vibes story: on basic facts about the economy, facts that cannot really be ascertained from personal experience, Americans are overwhelmingly wrong. ft.com/content/9c7931โฆ
- Champaign, Illinois is a far more attractive city than I realised
- There's a "British pub" in Chicago called the Red Lion that serves imperial-size pints and stuff like chicken tikka makes and Shepherd's pie and I swear it's impossible to get a table, always totally mobbed
- Replying to @dlknowles"Social media isn't real" isn't a new insight but I do feel like Joe Biden's most enthusiastic supporters are especially not online, whereas his critics on the left are extremely online, and it does rather exaggerate the scale of discontent
- The cost of freezing fuel duty from 2010 (a 37% real terms cut) is about ยฃ6bn a year. If Britain tolled its motorways at the same price France does, it would raise ยฃ7bn a year. Funny how we can afford free motorways and endlessly declining fuel tax revenues but not a train
- I like this meme because I think one of the more subtle things about car dependency is that we have... literally got so used to cars we don't even see them most of the time. Once you start noticing how much space they take up, well, you go a little mad. Like I haveSo tired of these scooters blocking sidewalks
- Cab driver in Scotland driving us back to our hotel from a lovely wedding telling us about how he has just qualified as an electrician and having qualified, he and his partner are moving to Australia with a job offer at twice the wages he'd make here. Emigration is back eh
- Replying to @dlknowlesI have a theory that a lot of politics is actually returning to a pre-television format, where local parties getting the vote out matter a lot more and messaging can't be finessed at a high level to be broadcast to the whole population anywhere near as much. Fits that
- A thing that people don't realise about Chicago is that there are big cultural benefits to living in a city where rent is cheap enough that young artists can afford to live somewhere with a fairly modest day job
- The number of people out on bicycles this weekend in Chicago makes me think that this city could *eclipse* London or Paris on bike usage if it invested in safe infrastructure. The reason why? Americans are rich enough to already own bikes and the space to store them
- Replying to @dlknowlesThis graphic (apologies to @TheHustle, I just found it on this site) is a pretty good illustration of why a lot of new American pickup trucks are really just luxury SUVs and not actually that useful
