Tag: Good News

Turning Tide?

Business, Drive Time, Eco-Crap

Via Reader Mike L (thankee, squire), comes this little snippet that may just be the signal of something or other:

Hertz, which has made a big push into electric vehicles in recent years, has decided it’s time to cut back. The company will sell off a third of its electric fleet, totaling roughly 20,000 vehicles, and use the money they bring to purchase more gasoline powered vehicles.

Electric vehicles have been hurting Hertz’s financials, executives have said, because, despite costing less to maintain, they have higher damage-repair costs and, also, higher depreciation.

“[C]ollision and damage repairs on an EV can often run about twice that associated with a comparable combustion engine vehicle,” Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr said in a recent analyst call.

And EV price declines in the new car market have pushed down the resale value of Hertz’s used EV rental cars.

I lost count how many whammies are contained in the above, but it’s making parts of me tingle, and in a good way.   Okay, let me count the ways:

Higher damage-repair costs, higher depreciation and lower resale value.

Any one of those Bad Things would make me (as Hertz) want to cut back on the Duracells.  All together?  Short-Circuit City.

Ol’ Elon’s not gonna be happy, because if Hertz sneezes, the entire rental business gets diarrhea.

And common sense pokes its head above the parapet.

Accumulated Knowledge

Advice, House & Home

Background:  I once worked for an ad agency that had among its clients Vidal Sassoon, and from them I learned all the secrets of the trade.  Below is just a sample.

At its most basic level, shampoo is just a detergent.  Like all detergents, it takes away oils and greases.  Unlike your average kitchen dishwashing detergent, however, it’s very “gentle” — which means it has been severely diluted and therefore, on a cost per fluid ounce / milliliter basis, it outpaces Biden-priced gasoline.  This is particularly true if you buy the “premium” brands (e.g. with French names).

Technically, you could use simple bodywash (also expensive) or even a bar soap like Zest to wash your hair, although it’s a little harsh if your hair is normally thin and fragile.  However (and this leads into our sub-topic), what really counts, if you care for your hair at all, is not the detergent you use but the conditioner.

This is way more important than your shampoo, and a good conditioner will make your hair healthier than will some VO5-type budget conditioner — although, as with all things, budget conditioners work extremely well for some people because their hair responds to it better than to others, even expensive ones.

The more aggressive / cheaper your shampoo, the more money you’ll have to spend on conditioner.

So what do I use?  The cheapest shampoo (generally to be found on the bottom shelf at Kroger, with the lowest cost per ounce) and a mid-range conditioner like Pantene Pro-V.  But I have thick, healthy and wavy (not curly) hair, and I never use a blowdryer.  Also, I wash my hair about every other day, and use conditioner once a week only.

YMMV.

Addendum:  if you’re bald or wear your hair in a don’t-care buzz cut, you are obviously disqualified from commenting on this section, in that your opinions are like those of a cave-dwelling hermit about TV shows, or John Kerry about guns.

Political Snigger

Elections, Mocking Furriners

First we had that “right-wing” libertarian (?) winning big in [Don’t Cry For Me] Argentina, and now the Dutch too seem to have come to their senses (and not a moment too soon):

In yet another sign of a global political shift, the right-wing populist Party for Freedom in the Netherlands is projected to win a large plurality. According to exit polling, the PVV will pick up at least 35 seats while the current ruling coalition will combine for 37 losses while only winning 41 seats total. That makes Geert Wilders, the founder of the Party for Freedom, the big winner.

Of course, this has the Left screaming hair-on-fire stuff:

The Netherlands will join an increasingly long list of West European countries (CH, FR, IT, SE) where the radical right has overtaken the mainstream right has the main party of the right.

Never mind that their definition of “radical right” would, in U.S. terms, make Wilders’s party more like centrist Democrats (anyone remember them?) Over Here.  (For those unfamiliar with the terminology:  that would be Switzerland, France, Italy and Sweden [!] who have recently moved to the “right”.)

Anyway, getting back to the Dutchies:

“It’s been enough now. The Netherlands can’t take it anymore. We have to think about our own people first now. Borders closed. Zero asylum seekers,” Wilders said in a television debate on the eve of the election.

Sounds kinda like Trump, doesn’t it?  Let’s hope that Wilders, unlike Trump, actually starts to do something about the situation once he’s sworn in.

Expect the lawyers to start sharpening their quills so as to try to stop in the courts any commonsense policy he implements — just like our leftist assholes do Over Here.

Let the mass deportations begin… and once again, not a moment too soon.

Ask Not For Whom The Bell Tolls Etc.

Business, Watermelons

Stephen Moore has an excellent “story of the film so far” about the Net Zero / Green energy / no more cars with engines / unicorn fart-based energy initiative:

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that “clean energy” investment funds are tanking, with some down as much as 70% in recent months. Solar has been one of the worst-performing industry stocks this year.

This collapse is happening right when Exxon and Chevron have engineered a combined $110 billion blockbuster acquisitions to expand oil and gas drilling in the Permian Basin in Texas, one of the biggest oil fields in the world. This year, they both reported their largest profits ever.

They and their investors are looking at the real-world data, not green energy propaganda. In 2023, the world is guzzling oil and gas like never before. Global consumption of fossil fuels was higher in 2022 than at any time in human history, even as the developed countries spend hundreds of billions of dollars trying to stop oil, gas and coal.

As they say:  follow the money.  All the politicians’ wishful thinking won’t change the nature of the world (i.e. reality), as much as they’d like to think it can.

“Quick, Martha…”

Immigration, Mocking Furriners

“…hand me mah smellin’ salts!”  From KrautPres / Reichkanzler Olaf Scholz comes this little bombshell:

“We must finally deport on a large scale those who have no right to stay in Germany.“

I’ll believe it when I see it, but you have to admit, it’s a first from any post-Mutti Merkel politician.

And in the same article, from Swissland:

Switzerland moved rightwards in an election on Sunday, giving the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) more seats in parliament as concerns about rising immigration outweighed those about the environment, final results showed on Monday.

Wait… the Green Nude Eel is starting to lose favor with, of all people, the Swiss?  And “concerns about immigration”?  Anyone would think that Swiss cities like Zurich have seen a massive increase in violent crime, mostly committed by “immigrants” of the Afro-Arab persuasion.

Oh, wait… they have.