A moment's notice

I read in the local newspaper the lone surviving passenger in a fiery Tesla Cybertruck crash back in 2024 is finally officially suing Tesla. The lawsuit puts the blame on the manufacturer for creating a death trap. Tesla vehicles famously use electrically actuated door handles, rather than the physical mechanical linkage. Federal safety laws mandate a manual failsafe, but inside Tesla cars the backups are rather hidden. One can understand that in a fiery panic, one isn’t in the best of mind to locate the functioning backup.

Certain model doesn't have manual door releases at all in the rear passenger compartment!

The Cybertruck crash is an absolute tragedy. Notwithstanding the utter lack of wisdom by the teens in getting into a 1,000 horsepower 6,000 pound missile whilst under the influence. At 3:00 AM in the morning. Were the teens in any other normal combustion vehicle, I think they’d all survive. Mangled, sure, but very much alive. A normal car would have had physical door releases that actually work, no matter if the vehicle is in a blaze.

I don’t trust it, these electric actuators. It’s unsettling to be at the mercy of a computer and electricity. Besides, is Tesla even saving any production costs? Rules dictate a secondary mechanical backup. There’s essentially two releases for every door. That doesn’t seem very economical from a cost-of-goods standpoint.

This is why my car is a Volkswagen Golf from 2019. It’s got mechanical everything, down to the emergency brake handle.

I feel bad for the sole survivor. Not only does he have to deal with the long healing process, but he’s also suing (the estate of) his former friend - the driver who is now dead. His entire life trajectory upended by a moment’s folly of late teenager. Who amongst us hasn't done some stupid shit in our time? At that age, no one ever thinks of the downside in the moment.

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Porsche parking.

Harvard gets sued by Asians

Harvard getting sued for discrimination against Asian applicants is interesting to me because why now? Since the advent of affirmative action and ethnic quotas in schools, us Asians have always gotten the short end of the stick. When you adjust for “equality” based on results then there’s going to be an aggrieved party and unfortunately that’s us. A casualty of success. 

From the time when Asian people first stepped foot on this continent up until now we’ve been discriminated against one way or another (Chinese exclusion act, Japanese internment, you name it). All we’ve ever done in response is put our nose to the grindstone, work hard, and get after success like water dripping on stone. Even if it’s only a penny saved per day, given enough time to compound we got there. 

Asians aren’t vocal complainers and troublemakers. We take the situations and framework as they are work around and with them. Didn’t get into Harvard? We’d just kick ass at another school. Barriers didn’t stop and aren’t going to stop Asians from achieving financial success.

Because up until recent decades, Asians (immigrants) were predominantly poor so the prime objective was to make money - we didn’t have time for political games. Now that we’ve reached those goals and by many metrics are the most affluent ethnic group on average, Asians have the leisure to pursue other arenas of life, like suing Harvard (and other institutions) for blatant racial discrimination.

The political capital of Asian Americans is growing quite quickly. 

Commuting with the morning clouds at Balboa Park station.