DL Open Thread: Friday, July 28, 2023
Lawrence O’Donnell Explains The Latest Trump Indictment To You. He makes it so easy to understand. This one’s serious b/c it puts the final nail in the coffin of his Mar-A-Lago defense. This was a mob-style conspiracy to cover up criminal behavior. Except one person didn’t go along:
For those of you who don’t want to watch, this explanation by Ruth Marcus should suffice. The Watergate plumbers were masterminds compared to this bunch.
How Super-Villain Elon Musk Addressed Complaints From Tesla Owners.
In March, Alexandre Ponsin set out on a family road trip from Colorado to California in his newly purchased Tesla, a used 2021 Model 3. He expected to get something close to the electric sport sedan’s advertised driving range: 353 miles on a fully charged battery.
He soon realized he was sometimes getting less than half that much range, particularly in cold weather – such severe underperformance that he was convinced the car had a serious defect.
“We’re looking at the range, and you literally see the number decrease in front of your eyes,” he said of his dashboard range meter.
Ponsin contacted Tesla and booked a service appointment in California. He later received two text messages, telling him that “remote diagnostics” had determined his battery was fine, and then: “We would like to cancel your visit.”
What Ponsin didn’t know was that Tesla employees had been instructed to thwart any customers complaining about poor driving range from bringing their vehicles in for service. Last summer, the company quietly created a “Diversion Team” in Las Vegas to cancel as many range-related appointments as possible.
The Austin, Texas-based electric carmaker deployed the team because its service centers were inundated with appointments from owners who had expected better performance based on the company’s advertised estimates and the projections displayed by the in-dash range meters of the cars themselves, according to several people familiar with the matter.
Inside the Nevada team’s office, some employees celebrated canceling service appointments by putting their phones on mute and striking a metal xylophone, triggering applause from coworkers who sometimes stood on desks. The team often closed hundreds of cases a week and staffers were tracked on their average number of diverted appointments per day.
Managers told the employees that they were saving Tesla about $1,000 for every canceled appointment, the people said. Another goal was to ease the pressure on service centers, some of which had long waits for appointments.
In most cases, the complaining customers’ cars likely did not need repair, according to the people familiar with the matter. Rather, Tesla created the groundswell of complaints another way – by hyping the range of its futuristic electric vehicles, or EVs, raising consumer expectations beyond what the cars can deliver. Teslas often fail to achieve their advertised range estimates and the projections provided by the cars’ own equipment, according to Reuters interviews with three automotive experts who have tested or studied the company’s vehicles.
Just thought you might like to know if you’re going car-shopping.
Pickleball Has ‘Sold Out’. Sadness:
In Frank Pritchard’s telling, it was only meant to be a bit of fun. Or rather, a lot of fun.
Pritchard was there in the summer of 1965 when his father, the congressman Joel Pritchard, and two friends devised the game of pickleball at the house they rented for the summer on Bainbridge Island in Washington state.
They “invented” it using what they found lying to hand – a plastic, perforated wiffle ball, paddles shaped from plywood, and a net usually used for badminton.
The primary intention, says Pritchard, was to entertain a group of bored children and adults during the kind of long, hot school summer holiday that manages to lodge itself in many of our memories.
Almost 60 years later, pickleball has become the fastest-growing sport in the US with around 8.9 million participants. For a while there were several, rival professional leagues, which sought to emulate the NFL or NBA, with a pro circuit not dissimilar to tennis’s ATP.
Last year, the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA), supported by the sports entrepreneur Tom Dundon, agreed to merge with the Steve Kuhn-backed Major League Pickleball (MLP). The creation of another league, Vibe Pickleball, in which Mark Cuban had a stake, was floated but later included in that merger.
Professional Pickleball leagues. I suspect that both pickleball and cornhole will be Olympic sports before I exit this mortal coil. Might even hasten my exit.
Time For Carney To Disinvite BHL From Bill Signings. At this point, it’s nothing but free campaign publicity. Especially since she’s had absolutely nothing to do with the passage of the bills:
Following a tour of the Agriculture Commodities Building, the governor was joined by U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, state Secretary of Agriculture Michael Scuse, Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long, DNREC Secretary Shawn Garvin and several state lawmakers for the signing of Senate Bill 111.
The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Stephanie Hansen, D-Middletown, allows utility companies and farmers to enter into contracts that specify how excess kilowatt-per-hour credits will be applied at the end of the yearly billing period.
The new law attempts to help farmers by mitigating law passed during the 151st General Assembly, which capped the way in which owners of renewable energy, like solar, were able to roll their credits over into the next year.
Gov. Carney emphasized the role agriculture plays in the First State, adding that the legislation will “enable our farmers to take advantage of the value they can get.”
Yo, John. She’s running for Governor, a fact that even you know. If you want her to be the next Governor, endorse her. But stop giving her free pub.
Judge To Scott Walker: Alcoholism Is Not A Disability That Allows You To Drive Drunk:
A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit claiming a 72-year-old man’s alcoholism is a disability that should disqualify him from being cited with drunken driving by Milford police.
Using the word “frivolous” six times in his ruling, U.S. District Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly dismissed a lawsuit filed by Scott Walker, a longtime political candidate who’s well-known for his homemade political signs along Delaware roadways.
Walker, who could not be reached for comment, claimed Milford police should have heeded his request — because of his disability — to be left alone in order to sober up after being found semi-nude and sleeping behind the wheel of his running car in a fast food restaurant drive-thru. This, he argued, was a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Might as well close on a fitting musical note:
What do you want to talk about?
Greetings from Myrtle Beach! I’m staying with my parents again for a week down in Trump Country in their Never Trump home.
Happy to report that I flew out of Wilmington for the first time on Avelo. Great flight and low prices. I’m a convert.