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I wish this weren’t as noteworthy as it is, but with so many people these days making mistakes, getting called on them, then defending the mistake to the death because they absolutely cannot admit fault, it is. Thanks for having the integrity to admit when you mess up!
I know it’s not a huge deal to many, but please spell names properly. And for the record it’s “Michael.” Just think “A comes before E” or break it down into it’s original Hebrew of names ending in “-el,” like Nathaniel or Daniel.
Thank you for being open & honest about your mistakes. Thank you for going back and fixing them. Thank you for going out of your way to make sure people know about it (via this post).
Integrity is a value that keeps me coming around this place.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this is a wonderful place you’ve all built and we feel especially united when you let us peek behind the curtain. Rest assured that if you’d told us sooner how you feel about that guy, we wouldn’t have mentioned it (or at least would have done so more thoughtfully)! Sorry to throw you off your game. I love it here, thank you!
I remember hearing once that Michael Rapaport stopped a guy from opening a door on a commercial airliner in flight.
My immediate reaction was to be fair the guy was only trying to do it so he could get away from Michael Rapaport.
That guy sucks.
Matt, I hear ya and wish to share an anecdote which has a direct correlation to your situation. When I went grocery shopping this weekend, I accidentally bought vanilla Greek yogurt instead of plain.
We all fuck up and blame Michael Rappaport.
Hey, it happens to everyone. Nobody is perfect. One reason I support this site, is the honesty to try to interject in your posts. Keep up the good work!
Matt’s just trying to get out of his writing duties. If you ever want to get out of something, fuck it up so badly that nobody will ever ask you to do the thing again!
Shit happens. Last week I had to have a talk with some guys at work who messed up. Fixing their mistake added an extra week to a repair job. They’re both new, so we chalk it up to a training gap, address the gap, and move on.
I like to live by the mantra: it’s ok to make a mistake. But repeating the same mistake is when it stops being ok.
Plus, own up and admit to your mistake, don’t try to hide it.
I respect someone who admits a mistake and apologizes over a stubborn person who refuses to admit a mistake. I am not one of those former people. That is why I always enjoy DT and JT and the integrity this site has.
BTW if your writing a NR story you just need to use Sabina Schmidt data. She is the NR Queen may she RIP and I think she has driven every type of vehicle around both courses. Her almost 10 minute lap in a transit van is one of my favorites.
However once you realize the distance difference a simple XL spreadsheet could give you mph difference and show whether your premise is valid or not. I would also think comparison between race cars with race car drivers vs non race cars with non race car drivers would be interesting.
Oh btw Mark good news bad news. I don’t think you look like MR in the photos. I can see a resemblance, I would say you look like his dad.
Fail fast, learn from it, and move on. That’s just livin’, my friends!
One note – this mea culpa post is in the Tales From the Slack Members-only section.
I think non-members should see posts like this as well. Transparency builds trust, after all!
Perhaps there should be a new category of posts of the mea culpa variety?
What to call it?
“Tales from the Bin” or “Dashboard Confessional”?
Dashboard confessionals has been used. Maybe Backfire?
“Backfire” has been used by C&D.
“Missed shift”
”Gear grinding”
”Wrong turn”
I think an accent is an absolute minimum requirement to portray a character. If you can’t do twang, no one should ask you to play a texan. But hey, casting is complicated.
As for the piece, I think operating at firehose speeds is bound to wreck a few things. And I also think we all expect a few wrinkles to occur given the nature of this beast.
There is an interesting nugget of truth in your article but, yes, your methodology was a bit suspect. Often, racing series restrict the horsepower of the cars for competition balancing so that the actual racecar version of a sportscar has less power than the street version.
Of course, racecars have many other advantages such as aero effects for downforce and efficiency, super sticky tires, extremely stiff suspensions with trick dampers, no-lift transmissions, and smart differentials that provide a huge laptime advantage at a smooth racetrack.
So, in general, I doubt there are many stock streetcars that can beat the Nurburgring times of their race cousins but they might beat them in top speed or a drag race.
A side-by-side graphic of the Porsche GT3 street vs. racecar would be very interesting. Of course, actual performance numbers would be even better.
The disadvantage of having an engineer-led website is that it attracts engineers to read it. And engineers are the most pedantic, argumentative, and downright stubborn individuals that evolution has engineered.
> And engineers are the most pedantic, argumentative, and downright stubborn individuals that evolution has engineered.
I’m sorry, do you have any data to back this up? I mean, lawyers are literally paid to argue, can engineers really be worse than that? What metrics are you using to assess argumentativeness? Are we talking argumentative over details, or just broadly disagreeable? Because they’re different types of argument, and you need to be clear about what you’re comparing here. I’ve been arguing with people professionally for over 40 years now, and while that may have been true back when I started, newer engineers just aren’t made of the same stuff as the old ones – older engineers, man, those guys would dig their heels in and you couldn’t budge them for the world, but these new guys just fold under the slightest pressure now. I blame the bean counters. Now those guys are stubborn.
I am an engineer, my father was an engineer, and I’ve spent my life with engineers so I have more than a small sample but I can cite no peer-reviewed studies.
Notice that we are arguing over a meaningless attempt at self-deprecating humor on the Internet so I’ll just use this as Exhibit A
I think but can’t be sure Roofless is running with a bit about engineers being argumentative. I, too, would need more data or at least a closed /s tag to be sure 😉
You know we can’t laugh at your joke unless you show us an excel spreadsheet backing up your data.
Well after beaurocrats. Where is auto correct when you need it?
Can we nominate this for a weekend-special COTD? Or is that setting a bad precedent?
It was terrible, his accent. But aside from that, he [Rapaport] isn’t a terrible actor AFAICT, and Walton Goggins is SO DAMNED AMAZING as Boyd that the glow of his amazingness illuminated and elevated that craptacular panhandle patois and made it tolerable.
Acknowledging and learning from our mistakes is one of the most important things we can do. It’s both neat and brave to talk about them in such an open forum.
I always enjoy when my interests collide…cars, Boyd Crowder, and occasional pedantry.
I am not sure on Boyd Crowder but I do enjoy Clam Chowder
“this being an engineer-run website”
Well. That explains a lot.
#alsoanengineer
Sometimes it’s best to look back, reassess, and throw it into the Houston Astros branded trashcan.
I deem your punishment of one Astros elimination to be sufficient.
Astros-branded trashcan. I see what you did there. — Braves fan
Yeah, join the club. Those fuckups can really stick with you for a while, but they happen and a little focus on the good stuff can help to put those in the rear view mirror. And there’s plenty of good stuff here.
No excuse for cheating. As a Pirates fan our record speaks to our honesty.
Me, I’m always up for restaurant suggestions. Whose curry do you favor?
Just curious – when you wrote that September was “down,” is that down in website traffic or down in subscribers?
What does down mean in your context?
(we were still up 14% year-over-year but down 15% from where we’d been over the summer).
Website traffic.
So, i have some questions on this. Is there an expected apex of website traffic? I understand as a business, you want to see increases month over month and year over year, but there has to be a point where you peak or smaller increases are justified, right? I understand those numbers would be proprietary, but this comment got me thinking. (Data analysis is part of my job so stuff like this makes me curious).
I liked the race car vs street car piece, and for me anyway, the numbers were the less important part compared to the bigger implied question of: is this a good thing?
While I appreciate the engineer-detail that’s always evident here, I also really enjoy the subtle, thought-provoking nature of a lot of the pieces. That’s journalism at its best.
And come on, Rapport has had his moments. You’re probably NOT going to like a comparison with his great/grating appearance on the Simpsons, so how about his costarring with Arnold in the now-forgotten but not bad The 6th Day?
Same! I’m not the race nerd I always want to be, so it totally slipped me by, but it definitely had a very interesting thesis to me, and now that his baseball dreams are shattered (I think he said that in a TMD, I actively avoid baseball), maybe a rewrite could do it justice.
Thanks, MH, for not carrying on the worst parts of the Gawker culture. And just in case it needs saying.. please don’t publish any celebrity sex tapes here.
I can’t even spell nougat bearing or whatever it is, so wouldn’t have known the difference, on this side of the pond we got Nascar, and I imagine there are many street cars faster than the V8 roll cages in plastic shells, especially around corners, like even EVs like the Porsche Taycan.
And if it wasn’t for needing liquid cooling for the DCFC, I think all EVs should have the charge cords attached to the car, and just a receptacle on the charger itself, maybe that would lead to more evs actually having the plug front and center on the car instead of the random fender/taillight location the makes can’t seem to standardize on.
But the street car needs a racing equivalent or just go supercar
These posts make me feel far better about having been such an annoying fucker to you folks so very many times. It turns out you’re all just as fucked up as I. Not that we don’t all strive to be better.
We’re just people. Deeply fallible people who just want to make readers happy.
Well you’re doing a fine job of it. Just don’t ever sell out to PE please (kidding – I know you wont).
I don’t. I proudly wallow in my own incompetence and fling the blame onto others like a monkey with a handful of poo.
Just trying to be sunny here. Truth is, I can be pretty fucking lazy on occasion. And happy to make it anyone’s fault but mine as well.
I believe that you meant chimpanzee? Here is my poo????