Personal account of Jeff Miller. I'm the guy who makes bronze derby covers for Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Check them out: @OmahaDerbyCover.
Omaha, Nebraska
Joined May 2012
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This is an example of my work. I make a video like this of each piece because I've never figured out a way to show them properly in still photos. This gives you a far better idea of how they look.
Available here: omahaderbycovers.com/product…
Remember when people would say "check your privilege"?
Being blind to the fact that there are millions of working poor people who could have made good use of these "clunkers" is the definition of privilege.
For anyone curious about what it actually looked like to kill a generation of functioning cars, here’s an actual video from 2009 and brief explanation:
The dealer first replaces the oil with sodium silicate solution. It’s a clear-ish liquid that crystallizes under extreme heat. As the engine warms up the solution begins to form small abrasive crystals in the oil system that shred the bearing and score the cylinder walls.
Within seconds of starting the car you can see smoke billowing from the exhaust, this is the crystals scratching the cylinder walls and leaving small grooves for oil and solution to leak past into the combustion chamber and ignite/evaporate, producing the white smoke.
Pretty soon the entire crankcase is full of crystals and freshly shredded metal flakes, the engine seizes. It took about 40 seconds in this video. Some engines reportedly lasted up to 7 minutes, but all were destroyed. That strikes me as sort of sad in a way, like watching a great warrior slowly lose a heroic last stand.
Now, this is the part that gets insanely wasteful. These cars were sent to federally approved recycling facilities where they had 180 days to sell the non-engine parts before they were required to prove that they had shred the entire thing into scrap steel.
But, in talking to a guy who ran one such facility at the time, he typically just sent them straight to the crusher. The timeframes allotted weren’t long enough to dismantle all of the cars, and even if you could, the marginal prices of the parts was greatly diminished. You cannot sell 1000 transmissions when only 50 went bad that year, they became worthless.
So just like that, in order to increase prosperity and save the environment, 677,000 entire running cars and trucks were turned directly into rebar worth a few cents per pound.
The entire Obama administration was like a chapter out of atlas shrugged.
Fauxmaha retweeted
I drove a Full Self Driving Tesla for the first time a few weeks ago.
I was very impressed.
I'm not getting any better at driving myself and it seems there's hope.
Fauxmaha retweeted
The 10 Monarch butterflies I radio-tagged on Sep 11-13 (RHE_Alpha through RHE_Epsilon) and Sep 28-29 (RHE_Eta through RHE_Kappa) were last detected 3,164, 2,517, 2,073, 1,567, 1,528, 1,428, 1,326, 1,046, 993, and 744 km southwest of the release point in New Jersey (1 in Mexico, 1 in Texas, 1 at the BP Argus oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, 3 in Florida, 1 in Georgia, 2 in South Carolina, and 1 in North Carolina).
The uninitiated might think this description is a bit overwrought.
It isn't.
That really is how bronze work is done.
In a world where everything seems to happen in an instant, this kind of work can not be rushed. It has to happen in its own time. It is the only way to get that timeless result.
We introduced William Paquet @PaqWilly in the gallery’s first week. His sculpture "UNTIL DEATH" is a piece that warrants a second, and closer, look.
Bronze sculpture operates on a timeline that is unique to itself, and the tempo of creation is a magnetic force influencing the artist's ultimate vision. The sculptor works in clay for weeks, sometimes months, modeling the form at varying scales and correcting proportions from every angle. When the clay is finished and a full scale model has been completed, a mold is taken (sometimes by the artist, sometimes by the foundry). A wax positive is pulled from that mold — hollow, thin-walled, holding the exact shape of everything the sculptor built by hand. The wax is refined, invested in a ceramic shell, and fired in a kiln until the wax melts out. "Lost Wax Process" is the particular term for this method.
Finally, molten bronze, running above 2,000°F, is poured into the void the wax left behind.
The pour lasts seconds, but the cooling takes hours to ensure the bronze does not crack or deform. The shell is broken away to reveal the raw casting, which then requires weeks of chasing (filing, grinding, welding seams) before the patina is applied. Start to finish, a common timeline is three to six months for a single piece. Each stage is viscerally physical. Each stage is irreversible.
Paquet is self-trained in this tradition, experimenting and learning with the natural intuition that comes from producing piece after piece after piece. "UNTIL DEATH" is a product of that commitment — decades of learning culminating in months of studio and foundry work.
The process cannot be separated from the finished sculpture; every surface is a conscious decision. Taking the time to look and appreciate every detail honors the artist, and feeds your soul.
Fauxmaha retweeted
Walter Kirn: Everything that happens before the election is a PSYOP.
KIRN: “Everything that happens, the polling, the rumors, the word of mouth, the social media posts, the trends, the little anecdotes that get repeated and go viral. Everything is subordinate to that election. And none of it is true in and of itself. It's all instrumental.”
“Not only don't I trust the polls, I do trust the polls. I trust them to be nudging people in all the ways that polls can for all the people who can pay for polls.”
“The news now is all about behavior modification. It's not about truth.”
For the next week, every poll or viral story you see, don't ask if it's true. Ask what it's trying to get you to do.
Fauxmaha retweeted
A Thread analysing what these Art Deco motifs might suggest:
1. FAN
This pattern looks like rays spreading from a narrow base.
It might even form a semicircle, resembling an open hand fan.
The fan is among the oldest decorative items in human history.
It appeared in ancient Egypt as early as 3100 BC. It also appears in different shapes and forms across many cultures.
The way a fan is made, from its shape to its material, could be more than useful in creating a breeze.
The item could also communicate wealth, social status, or cultural identity.
The unique semicircular shape, radiating ribs, and symmetrical arrangement made it especially important as a source of inspiration for many artists and designers.
A common example here is the Chrysler Building in NY, where the radiating, semicircular shape on the crown does resemble a fan
ALT The Chrysler Building in New York
ALT A hand held fan
Left v Right is a useless frame.
The frame that matters is libertarian vs authoritarian.
The choice between left wing authoritarianism and right wing authoritarianism is no choice at all.
I read stuff like this, including a whole bunch of Epstein Files stuff, all designed to make the case that Trump is thoroughly debauched.
It is always stated with a deliberate blind eye to the fact that, were it true, the Biden administration would have taken action on it.
The partisan Dems are left either thinking Biden was thoroughly incompetent, or in on it himself.
