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Cake day: December 27th, 2025

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  • The reason the PIT maneuver works is physics. Cars are typically heavier on the front end, steer from the front, drive from the rear, and the tires are ‘stationary’ in reference to the ground so they are using the coefficient of static friction rather than the coefficient of kinetic friction (an aside, if you’re trying to use a pickup line on an engineer, hit them with the 'ole ‘Is there ever a case where the coefficient of kinetic friction is greater than that of static friction? No? Then the hardest part of this conversation is over, eh?’).

    What that means is everything is in favor of the car using its front end to push the rear end to the side. The front tires are turned in the direction of travel, so they have the static friction still going in a manner less likely to lose it. The rear tires will lose the higher traction from the static friction and suddenly be ‘drifting’ as they switch to the friction forces using the kinetic friction coefficient, whereas even if the front tires were to momentarily lose traction, they wouldn’t have the driving force of the engine keeping them in the lower friction state. The heavier weight from the front is more likely to be able to push the lighter rear.

    There is also another factor, slightly less important to the pit maneuver itself (the tactic) and more along the lines of the overall goals of the chasers and the runners (the strategy)… and as a matter of fact, why cops don’t typically use the pit maneuver much anymore. Even with the specialized bumpers they once had, damage to the cop’s car is pretty typical. Damage to the fleeing car is very likely, and damage to people that might be around is common. Cops nowadays are pretty happy to just chase you, keeping a moderate distance, until you make the mistake and wreck or give up, either on the car and try to flee on foot, or by heading towards what you think is a ‘safe’ spot. In fact, if they get a helicopter up, you might not even see the cops anymore as they maintain a distance back and turn off lights. That one is pretty rare, but it occasionally happens, and more often than a pit maneuver. Anyway. If you tried to ‘reverse pit’ them, you’d be slowly taking your one advantage away. They have a lot more cars than you. They can afford to take a little damage if it means slowing you down if you want to start playing the nascar bump game.






  • I think it’s more that baseball has slowly become an ‘elite’ sport, and republicans (who have their cultural image shaped by elites) want to be elite. Rich kids can definitely still pursue baseball as an alternative to polo. Meanwhile, basketball is still viewed as a sport where you can go to that basketball hoop at the park, work your way up from a kid through school trying hard, and make it (even if basketball players now have the same ‘academy’ style training facilities that they came from just like baseball has had for a few decades). I have at least one acquaintance who did the whole ‘traveling high school team’ thing for basketball now.

    The image still in people’s head though, is of charles barkley and (shit I can’t remember his name) the other houston rocket guy who played at their local community center before playing for the rockets. The center still had their pictures and stories up on the wall when I was last in houston. It still feels like people come from that path. Contrast that with my acquaintance from high school who eventually played pro baseball where it was more something along the lines of: moved to a high school with an elite, known team; went to a baseball trainer after school; played in the amateur, organized leagues outside of school; had parents arrange meetings with scouts, coaches at colleges, and toured each program; played in college; kept going to a trainer during college; then finally went to amateur/pro baseball.









  • “Exceeds expectations”

    “Exceeds expectations”

    “Exceeds expectations”

    “Exceeds expectations”

    ‘Well, nanner, you got one write up, which is lower than 95% of the company, so looks like you’ll only be getting 1.5% instead of the 3% for average, and I don’t personally give out the 6% raise I’m allowed to.’ - my fucking supervisor, while other supervisors hand out everything like candy (not really, they just shower their favorite)


  • Because selling sex is much more about the teasing than the actual presentation. I’m convinced that the reason we don’t have nude models selling you stuff on billboards is that the lingerie/just-before-the-bedroom clothes are more effective, so advertising companies don’t care to get case law or actual legislation allowing nude advertisements.




  • If you’re going to tell people to look into the lens of romantic*/companionate (and all the other ones you didn’t mention: nonlove/liking/infatuation/empty love/fatuous love/consummate love) you should at least give them some starting points.

    • Triangle theory of love: Robert Sternberg (1987, 2006)
    • Brain regions; attachment/commitment vs sexual desire: Diamond (2004), Aron et al. (2005), Xu e al. (2011)
    • Lust/attraction/attachment, dopamine/serotonin influences: Helen Fisher (2006), Aron et al. (2008),
    • More influence of dopamine/serotonin: Ackerman (1994, p. 165)
    • Critiques of simplifying love: Fehr (2006)
    • Some more neurotransmitters and hormones: Macdonald & Macdonald (2010), Hill et al. (2009), Gouin et al. (2010), Ditzen et al. (2009), Theodoridou et al. (2009)
    • Loves sternberg didn’t consider: Berscheid (2010), John alan lee (1988),
    • Decreases in romantic love: sprecher & regan (1998), Tucker & aron (1993), Gupta & Singh (1982) and the followup D. Myers (1993), Walster & Walster (1978), Abhmetoglu et al (2010), Call et al. (1995), Klussman (2002)
    • Non-decreases in love: Acevedo et al. (2011),

    Personally, I would really, really recommend the textbook Intimate Relationships by Rowland S. Miller to anyone who is curious about the subject. I had to go pull my edition off of the bookshelf to quickly throw out all the references above.

    *because passionate love isn’t the category. The proposed idea was the triangle theory of intimacy, passion, and commitment, which led to the eight above categories----