I don’t get it:
But back in his home district, Mr. Shea also began attracting the attention of law enforcement for his growing embrace of fringe ideologies and conspiracy theories. He networked with local militia groups, talked about plans to create a 51st state called Liberty and distributed to his closest followers a “Biblical Basis for War” document that calls for the “surrender” of those who favor abortion rights, same-sex marriage, “idolatry” and communism. “If they do not yield — kill all males,” it said.
Last week, a report commissioned by the State Legislature asserted that Mr. Shea had engaged in domestic terrorism in his support of the armed takeover of Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by militant ranchers and their supporters in 2016 — part of a protest over federal ownership of public lands in the West.
The report prepared for the Legislature found that Mr. Shea had played a role in planning the Malheur standoff, which sought to challenge the federal government’s control and management of public lands. Leaders in the standoff were charged but acquitted of crimes related to the event, which resulted in state troopers fatally shooting one participant.
But Mr. Shea and about two dozen of his trusted allies have quietly pursued ambitious plans that went far beyond the standoff at Malheur, preparing for what they saw as a fracturing United States.
They compiled manuals on everything from how to escape handcuffs to the operation of military weaponry and, according to the report to the legislators, laid the groundwork to form an alternative government that would be poised to take over after the expected fall of the United States government.
“He’s not about preserving America. They are about starting their own country,” said Sheriff Knezovich, who was concerned enough about Mr. Shea’s activities that he has gathered what he had found over the years and sent it to the F.B.I.
I don’t want to chalk it all up as white privilege, because there is a lot of Christian privilege in there, too, but it goes without saying that if he had a hint of melanin in his skin and a different name, he would be in jail already.
ruemara
It’s is very much white privilege. The most potent form. White, straight, cis, “Christian” privilege.
redactor
Forget it, Jake. It’s Spokane Valley.
feebog
Seditious mofos. They need to be indicted, tried and put away for a long time.
NotMax
tap tapIs this thing on?Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
Seriously. I could swear I first heard about this motherfucker months ago.
Adam L Silverman
The local sheriff has been in touch with the FBI, he has publicly stated so and that he wants Shea in custody. He has also stated that he is very concerned what will happen if he, Washington state law enforcement, or the Feds attempt to arrest Shea. As a result, and in conjunction with the fact that Shea is white and Christian, he walks free.
Adam L Silverman
@feebog: You did. He tried to put a hit out on state law enforcement by calling “his patriots and militia” to come and protect the Washington state Republican members of the legislature who were refusing to come into session when called. The Democratic majority leaders had asked state law enforcement to go get their Republican colleagues and Shea began issuing threats.
AJ
You can really get away with anything in this country if you’re white.
Aleta
White politics
Marcotte’s article in Salon: In Trump’s America “Christian” is no longer a religious faith — it’s white identity politics
mrmoshpotato
Has this Trump trash considered forming his state of Liberty halfway between California and Hawaii?
ETA – or how about about on Venus? Poor, oppressed white men can take it back from wimmen!
Chris T.
@AJ: Well, white and rich. White and poor, you get away with some things, but not anything. Color and rich? Tread carefully…
mrmoshpotato
@Aleta: “I’m a Christian! And I hate blacks, and Mooselimbs and brown folk!”
Borat: That’s a nice. You know this camera is a on, a right?
Adam L Silverman
@Aleta:
https://balloon-juice.com/2016/10/08/the-herrenvolk-component/
The prediction he wouldn’t get elected is obviously wrong, but the stuff on herrenvolkism in the US is spot on.
joel hanes
Anyone else been getting repeated 402 gateway errors from cloudflare?
I couldn’t get to Balloon Juice at all for more than an hour during the afternoon …
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Would the pantsless man please stop dancing on the microphone? Thank you. Microphone-dancing requires long pants for your safety.
Adam L Silverman
@joel hanes: Yes. It has been up and down a few times over the past couple of days.
And no, I have no idea what is going on. Or why the site is down more often now than before we did the rebuild.
HalfAssedHomesteader
@Aleta: Tax the churches.
Martin
@Adam L Silverman: Seriously, dude needs to grow a pair.
hells littlest angel
White christian male privilege, just as our founding fathers envisioned.
And, sadly, that’s not sarcasm. There’s some good stuff in it, but, on the whole, our Constitution is fucking awful.
Adam L Silverman
@Martin: That sheriff is surrounded by more of Shea’s supporters than he has deputies and volunteers. And that’s just from the church Shea belongs to.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
It’s tough enough gamboling on a lavalier mic without having to fret over accouterment.
Chris T.
It’s not so much “cannot use”—although it works out that way—as “competing standards”. VW is pairing up with Electrify America to install these things.
I mentioned the SAE J1772 standard, with its 240 volt household (“dryer outlet” or central air conditioner type socket and EVSE) overnight charging. That is a public standard, so anyone can use it. The advantage is that it’s cheap. The drawback is that it’s slow (overnight)—fine for in/at your own house, not so great for anything else.
Nissan and other Japanese manufacturers came up with their own fast-charging standard, almost a decade ago now, and it is apparently relatively common in Japan now. It’s called CHAdeMO. It will do 400 to 500 volts (DC rather than AC) at up to 125 amps, which delivers 50 to 62.5 kW of charging current. With a 50 kWh battery, 50 kW would charge it up in about an hour. The Leaf has a 40 kWh battery, so—minding the slowdown once you get to 80%—you should be able to get a full charge with about a one hour stop.
So, everyone should use CHAdeMO, right? Not so fast… in a Not Invented Here move, the SAE decided they’d take their charging socket/plug design, which already looks a heck of a lot like a big ugly gas pump nozzle, and add a DC fast charge cable to it. The result is the Combined Charging System or CCS connector.
So, what about Tesla? Tesla decided that all of those standards were terrible, and they should invent one master standard that can just take over the world. https://xkcd.com/927/
The Tesla standard connector only plugs into Telsa cars. In lots of ways, it is a lot nicer than all the other ones. Plus, Tesla will give or sell you (not sure which) adapters so that your Tesla car can plug into any of these. (It would be nice if other manufacturers would give or sell you adapters, but there are technical reasons this is more difficult: Tesla’s standard really is technically superior.)
So: there’s a jumble of fast chargers, nobody talks to the other guy’s (except Tesla who can use everyone’s), and… well…
Adam L Silverman
@Chris T.: Sir, this is a Whataburger…
Dan B
The residents of the Idaho panhandle have been trying to get rid of tge Hayden Lake crowd and their descendants for decades. Spokane Valley is on the Idaho border. Spokane has been trending purple for years. This Shea monstrosity may turn th city blue. (Spokane Valley is no longer part of Spokane.) 350 miles from Seattle is still too close.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Haha Well played.
Gravenstone
@feebog: I’d replace your outcome with ‘hanged by the neck until dead. And their bodies left to rot on the gallows.’ But I’m funny that way.
Kattails
Had to work all day & a long one tomorrow, so I’ve just been quickly catching up on the day before crawling off to beddy-bye. The thread about windmills is dead, but I wanted to take note about the oft-repeated idea that cats are major killers of birds. Anyone who’s interested can go to the alleycat.org (website of Alley Cat Allies), go to the drop-down menu under Our Work>cats and wildlife, and find information debunking the studies showing this outrageous number of billions of birds killed by cats. I’m just too wiped to do the links for you right now (retail sales here and you know I’m old so should just die out anyway to save the planet because all the young people are just so woke & slathering to fix everything but I’m standing in their way)\\Like I said, catching up. Thx to Dorothy Windsor for pushing back at that comment.
The falsehood about cats is worth referencing because it results in justifying killing many thousands of cats each year.
As for the current thread, why not in jail: 1)melanin 2)gender 3)religious persuasion pretty much covers it.
Martin
@Adam L Silverman: I get that. You call the governor and the FBI and tell them you need some help and request that he not be housed locally. This nation has no shortage of police.
[edit] Put another way, when it was time to turn firehoses on black people just trying to vote, or black kids trying to go to school, the manpower was easily found.
mrmoshpotato
@Gravenstone: Why do you deny Jaws a good meal?
Dan B
@Adam L Silverman: Agreed. You Tube has all the tech explanations necessary. The politics is where things matter. Ask Greta.
Adam L Silverman
@Martin: Unfortunately the US doesn’t work that way. But it goes beyond that. The amount of trouble, and that trouble is measured in large amounts of violence, that Shea is believed to be able to stir up is what is being weighed against simply picking him up. The local sheriff doesn’t have the resources and he’s probably got a pretty good idea of who in the area, including other local law enforcement and government officials, will side with Shea. So how many bodies are the state and Feds going to pour in? The issue isn’t taking Shea into custody, if done right, that can be done very efficiently. The issue is whether Shea can create a local, violent rebellion that includes reinforcements from out of the area that outnumber what the state and the Feds can or will provide.
Chris T.
@Chris T.: the thing is, even 50 kW isn’t enough.
50 kW (like the 400V x 125 amp setup for CHAdeMO) isn’t really that great. If you have a Leaf, with its smaller (40 kWh) battery, you can get pretty darn close to a full charge in an hour. A half hour would be better.
Tesla’s charging system has always—since the original Roadster—been the best. You could set up your home system with 70 amp 240V right from the start, and when they came out with superchargers, they did 90 kW and have since ramped them up to 120 kW or more. Like everyone, though, there are some Little, or maybe Big, White Lies embedded in this. A lot of superchargers, for instance, have two sets of wires coming out of one box, as it were. Plug in one Tesla, and you charge at 120 kW. Plug in another one, on the other wire, and both drop to 60 kW.
Many parking-lot chargers are like this, even using the old “Level 2” (7.2 kW max) J1772 connectors. You’ll find these at ChargePoint stations at Targets here in the SF Bay Area, for instance. Plug in one car and it charges at 7.2 kW; plug in another one on the other side, and both drop to 3.6 kW.
Meanwhile, you might go out to someplace that supposedly has 50 kW chargers, like one of the new EA ones. They solve(?) the problem of CCS vs CHAdeMO by having one of each … which means if the one you need is in use, they have none for you. But even if you get to plug in, you may find it’s actually putting out just 35 kW, not the purported 50 kW.
CCS can, in theory at least, charge at up to 170 kW in Europe. See this InsideEVs article for details. In practice, anything over 50 kW usually requires liquid-cooled cables, so there are very few if any >50 kW chargers anywhere.
Probably the most maddening problem of all is that each system (Blink, ChargePoint, Electrify America, etc) tends to have their own app that tells you which of their chargers are available and working … and even then, they’re wrong half the time. When you find one that is working, you may need a card for that particular network: not all of them take credit cards. There’s some hope here as they are starting to embrace each other’s not-credit-card RFID cards: EA and ChargePoint in particular are supposed to be doing that. But I still have a separate card for each.
Adam L Silverman
@Dan B: Actually and more seriously, I think
@Chris T.: ‘s explanation is actually quite clear and very interesting. It was just so far from the topic of the post, that I saw an opportunity for smartassedness. And I took it.
NotMax
OT.
Oy vey. Foreign film (Danish) running on Netflix. Part of the way through switched it to the (ugh) English dubbed version as wanted to stretch out and mostly just listen while resting the eyes for a bit.
No sooner did so than along came a sentence with the word “quays” in it. The actor doing the dubbing pronounced it “kwaze.” *shudder
CaseyL
@Kattails: A thousand thanks for that information!
My cat Oscar is, unfortunately, one of the hunting types – though he’s reached feline middle age, and maybe is no longer the Mighty Hunter of yore. I’ve always felt deeply conflicted about his going out and killing things, but the only way to put a stop to it would be to break his heart by not letting him go outside anymore.
(I did try belling him. It freaked him out so much he couldn’t even drink from the water dish, because the bell would knock against the dish and chime. Off it came.)
Adam L Silverman
Shea’s in real trouble now!
Mike in NC
We can never dismiss how being born white and filthy rich is a disadvantage in America.
Martin
@Adam L Silverman: Then activate the national guard. Seriously, we can’t be held hostage by domestic terrorists.
Chetan Murthy
@CaseyL: [I have no dog in this fight. I have no pets and never have. But if I’d have a pet, it would be a cat. Regardless, I have no dog in this fight.]
Maybe that site (alleycats.org) is right. Maybe not. But it isn’t just one study (which is what that site makes it out to be) that shows that cats are the major cause of songbird mortality. Here’s another:
https://insider.si.edu/2011/03/alarming-number-of-fledgling-suburban-catbirds-fall-prey-to-domestic-cats-study-finds/
Again, I’m not trying to get into an argument. it’s probably worthwhile digging into the actual scientific research, before accepting at face value the arguments of an obviously biased advocacy group. If I could find one study so easily, I’m sure there are a bunch more.
Kristine
@Adam L Silverman: I’ve wondered whether one reason why the Bundys and the rest of the Malheur crowd got off so lightly was because of fear of forest rangers being murdered in retaliation.
Adam L Silverman
@Martin: I’m not advocating not taking him into custody. I’m just delineating what the risk assessments are. And that includes the risk of turning the greater Spokane area into a low intensity war zone during the holiday season. How many citizens will be put at risk? How much damage to person and property may occur?
Right now law enforcement knows where he is and he is being monitored by local, state, and Federal law enforcement. I guarantee that there are active state warrants, and likely Federal as well, for all his communications. So they know who he is talking and emailing and IMing and chatting with. This allows them to build a picture of the entire network. Unless he’s really, really stupid, I expect he’s on his best behavior right now.
Adam L Silverman
@Kristine: Actually it was because the DOJ screwed up the prosecutions.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/12/the-government-has-screwed-up-the-bundy-case-even-worse-than-we-realized/
Kattails
@CaseyL: Glad it was helpful! I had outdoor cats for a long time and found more mice, chipmunks, and frogs getting done in. We forget that birds prey on other birds; many will lay eggs in others’ nests. Hawks will go after fledglings.
Farmers insist on mowing fields for hay in the early part of the year when field-nesting birds are trying to hatch out.
Humans are the number one threat to birds and other wildlife. Habitat loss is a huge factor, and we forget that it isn’t just “well but there are trees in the neighborhood” but that many species need a certain amount of contiguous habitat which is becoming more and more fragmented. I’ve lost a lot of birds to windows when the light is wrong. High rises are murderous. Pollution is another issue, as is the loss of many birds’ major dietary sources–insects.
Do check out the Alley Cats site, as they link to several articles about this. Off to sleep for now….
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
That liberty ship has left the drydock.
Amir Khalid
Never mind.
Jackie
@Adam L Silverman: He is a stain in MY state. I live in eastern WA, and, yes, it’s more Trump Country than not, but this guy is over the top for most Republicans in WA. Thankfully I don’t live in his district, yet I still live in a county he’s trying to convert to Liberty state. I think (hope) there’s enough Blue in our neck of the woods (desert) to prevail against him.
Aleta
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks for that reference. It looks like the article you link to when you say “And in the US Herrenvolk democracy was and is a democracy for white Christians” is actually arguing that poor southern whites were not part of the Herrenvolk at that time, regardless of their Christianity. (Though I don’t see mention of Christianity, only race and class.) Like you, I include Christianity and Trump supporters who don’t own property in our dominance-obsessed white US culture now, but in the article you cite about the Late Antebellum South, it seems David Brown is making a different distinction, in a different analysis.
CaseyL
@Adam L Silverman:
He’s really, really arrogant; quite possibly believes, like Tim McVeigh did, that the people of the US will rise up in revolt if he shows them the way. (Or at least the people of Eastern Washington.)
If what he’s looking for is an opportunity to martyr himself for the cause, I imagine there’s an LEO or two willing to oblige him…
Martin
@Adam L Silverman: If its for intel gathering, then fine, thats a good move. But to be honest, it feels like law enforcement is more concerned about their well being here than that of the public. I don’t take the ‘putting the public in the crossfire’ argument very seriously, because we already are. A white supremacist murdered a college student just up the road from me. Every Monday I have to walk my work buildings to remove their recruitment literature. It used to show up on the occasional weekend, now it’s every weekend, and it’s getting more overt.
We’re just normalizing this shit through general inaction.
jimmiraybob
trollhattan
I want to know where this bastard’s whereabouts January 17, 2011.
trollhattan
@CaseyL:
It’s possible. Charlie Manson wanted the same.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin: The President of the United States told them they could let their freak flag fly.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: How’s the new laptop working out?
Joey Maloney
@mrmoshpotato: They considered it, but after the whole dildos and giant-drum-of-lube debacle at Malheur, they didn’t want to risk being known as a Veneral population.
dimmsdale
@Adam L Silverman: So the country is indeed at the point where white supremacists and various other ‘sovereign citizens’ can dictate law enforcement behavior thru threat of violence. I thought the Malheur occupation was a joke, weekend warrior cosplayers and posers strutting around with weapons they were barely competent to use; was distressed to discover how many local sheriffs are in on the sov-cit/white supremacist underground, and how relatively incompetent federal prosecutors are in dealing e.g. with the Bundys. I still doubt the combat competence of most of these preening nincompoops, but I suppose merely the threat to civil order and of innocent lives lost is enough to get law enforcement to back off out of prudence. The point Martin made above about normalizing (and thereby to a degree encouraging) all this behavior by letting it stand worries me, though. Shea, writ larger, is Donald Trump, and Shea’s minions projected onto a national scale? Hopefully too splintered and disorganized to amount to a solid unified movement, but … how would one know?
John Revolta
@trollhattan: Article says <a href=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Penitentiary,_Lompoc“>Lompoc</A
EDIT: Wait, you mean Shea’s whereabouts, yeah? Nevermind.
CaseyL
Totally OT – my apologies, but I’m so excited I have to shout it out: The Seahawks just (re-) signed Marshawn Lynch for the remainder of the season. Beast Mode is back in Seattle!
Sunday’s game against SF is gonna be LIT.
trollhattan
@John Revolta:
Like, what was Skippy into before getting elected to the Wash State House? Deserves a deep dive IMO.
trollhattan
@CaseyL:
He deserves to have his final NFL snap be in a Seattle uniform (not the [choke] Raiders) but there’s zero chance he’s in NFL shape to bang against the league’s #2 defense.
I will nevertheless be in my chair, rooting the plaster off the ceiling for him.
Amir Khalid
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Absolutely fantastic. Except that I have not yet managed to banish the evil red squiggle of spellcheck, which is underlining your nym as I type this.
CaseyL
@trollhattan: Apparently the possibility came up, in the most casual way possible, when Marshawn visited the ‘Hawks about a month ago – that is, before the injuries to the running backs that made signing him (and Turbin, another returnee) imperative. He’s undergone intensive training ever since.
patrick II
Chris t
Toshiba has a new standard out that charges your auto battery in six minutes. I would have a link, but the last time I had a link to either your comment or the Toshiba article, this place crashed for me. Any Balloon Juice people — the links are what is bringing it down for me. I was in a text mode, had a link back to Chris T, and an outside link to a Toshiba article.
hitchhiker
@Adam L Silverman:
If you haven’t listened to it, you’d find the whole Bundyville podcast interesting. Episode 6, I think is the one where Representative Shea appears.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Have a feeling you’re talking about spell checking in the browser rather than in Windows proper (gave you the steps for that yesterday). In Firefox, go to Options. On the General page there, uncheck the check your spelling option under Languages.
Yarrow
@Amir Khalid: If it’s Chrome you can turn off spell check in Settings / Advanced Settings / Languages
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: Go to the “Start Menu”, select settings, select devices, select typing in the left column, turn off one or both of the first two items under “Spelling”
ETA: As NotMax an Yarrow noted, it could also be your browser that’s doing it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: Firefox is Satan’s spawn.
WereBear
I understand Mark Halperin used a similar tactic for years. Outright intimidation and shrugging off anything short of actual imprisonment will get someone very far indeed.
The threat of violence can act the same way actual violence does. Worrying about violence and doing nothing about it is worse, IMHO.
Raven Onthill
@Chris T.: No, not exactly. So far Tesla Model 3s (the ones you can afford) can only plug into Tesla fast chargers.
satby
It’s verification that a lot of law enforcement officials understand better than the public does how close we seem to be in some areas of the country to our currently “cold” civil war turning hot. But I agree, the longer they get away with treason and intimidation, the more emboldened they become.
Amir Khalid
The evil red squiggle of spellcheck is banished! I can now missspell words to my heart’s comtent. Yay! Thanks for the help!
Raven Onthill
As far as I can tell he’s not a traitor (though for all I know he is getting Russian funding), but he is a terrorist. Problem is, there’s a faction of the FBI that is sympathetic to right-wing terrorists and, as Adam Silverman has pointed out, it is possible there will be violence if he is taken into custody. The last time that was tried, it was a place called Ruby Ridge, where the white supremacist Randy Weaver had threatened a federal marshal. A good accounting of the matter is given in Jess Walter’s book on the events. Even then the Republicans lionized Weaver. Now that Shea has been exposed, the Republicans are having second thoughts, but they have sown the wind.
???
BTW, as far as I can tell, the outcome of the Cliven Bundy Malheur Wildlife Reserve trial was a matter of one persuasive juror.
satby
@Amir Khalid: no need to be creative, the normal British spelling variants will be enough to titillate the spelling nerds amongst us.
Viva BrisVegas
There is a prior precedent for the outcome from this kind of tactic.
It was called the Third Reich.
Chris T.
@Raven Onthill: Huh, no adapters for Model 3s?
(I’ve seen lots of them on the road but have not looked at one up close. Various friends and acquaintances have had the S and Roadster. I don’t fit in a roadster, and didn’t like the interior of the S, not for that price anyway…)
joel hanes
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Opinions differ.
trnc
All those white supremacists kinda look alike.
Citizen Alan
@Adam L Silverman: Comments like this make me wonder whether the democrats should abandon our support for gun control legislation and instead start arming ourselves as quickly and thoroughly as we can.
BBA
@Citizen Alan: given recent events in Virginia, gun control may very well be the flashpoint that turns our cold civil war into a hot one.
Keeping Unionists armed and well-trained was the initial impetus being the formation of the NRA, though obviously it was captured by Confederates long ago.
I’ve fired a gun once in my life. I didn’t like it. I don’t trust myself with a gun. But these days… I wonder.
trnc
So they’re likely continuing to collect evidence daily.
germy
“I find that offensive.” Spokane Valley Mayor Rod Higgins voices support for Matt Shea
artem1s
jury of their peers, that’s why the Bundy’s are walking around free. This guy…who knows what kind of arsenal he has in whatever compound full of zealot followers he lives in. I can only imagine, given the current occupants of the WH and DOJ, that the FBI is being extra cautious to not have a Waco type situation develop. Last thing they need is to draw the attention of Twittler once they do pick this guy up. Cause you know what his attitude toward the crooked FBI is going to be. And seriously, why give the NRA a giant fund raising boost right when they are on the ropes.
Raven Onthill
@Chris T.: Adapters for level 2 AC charging – overnight charging –, yes. None for level 3 DC fast charging. As far as I know, it’s a matter of software and, so far, Tesla does not offer that software. (Or perhaps the charging hardware isn’t adaptable.)
I have family that owns a Model 3. It’s a nice vehicle, but it sometimes feels like riding in a computer with wheels rather than a car, and I suspect its heavy reliance on its large touch-screen is sometimes dangerously distracting.
Raven Onthill
@Chris T.: Adapters for level 2 AC charging – overnight charging –, yes. None for level 3 DC fast charging.
My sense of the Teslas (I have family which own them) is that they are more like computers with wheels than what we think of as automobiles, and they are utterly dependent on Tesla’s service and wireless network for maintenance. This is both monopolistic and a risk to owners if Tesla runs into financial problems.
LarrytheRed
“,,, but it goes without saying that if he had a hint of melanin in his skin and a different name, he would be in jail already.” Or dead.
ruemara
@Chetan Murthy: It’s not right. Sorry, guys. Keep your cats indoors.
TomatoQueen
@ruemara: The Alley Cat Allies group pioneered TNR (trap-neuter-return) for feral cat colonies many years ago, and has been a reliable advocate in communities and on the ground. Smithsonian I. has been peddling that same damn article for years in various forms. Amusingly enough, both organizations are locally in approximately the same neighborhood. What I notice is whenever that article gets into my feed, it’s been posted by a dog person. I never fail to point this out to them.
The reason you keep your cats indoors is their protection, their health, their safety, their much longer lives free of environmental disease and stupid parasites and being hit by stupid cars and tormented by cat-hating assholes, and not the birds, who last time I looked have wings and beaks and talons, which used to serve them quite well in escaping from poor old Luca and then the fuckers would turn around and dive bomb him, so a stand off quite often. Luca was the only indoor-outdoor cat I ever had, and spent enough of his life outdoors to contract chronic respiratory disease and live with a weakened constitution, and then died at age 12ish.
Merlin has just zoomed in and out with a loud meow.
ETA: Birds. I love the little bastards, nothing agin ’em, watch ’em all the time. Please do not @ me re: avians.
Spider-Dan
@Chris T.:
Tesla used to sell adapters for CHAdeMO fast chargers, but they’ve never produced an adapter for CCS.
And I would take issue with your description of the state of the charging market. The CHAdeMO connector (on the Leaf) is not backward compatible with the 240V J1772 connector that is literally everywhere in the US, which is exactly why CCS came into existence: you only need one slightly-larger charging port, instead of two separate ports for normal charging and fast charging.
As for Tesla: the reason why they have their own port is tied more to protecting their sales and brand marketing than anything else. If Tesla’s charging network used a standardized connector, then Elon “I’m not in this for the money, I just want to save the planet” Musk would have a hard time justifying NOT allowing the thousands of Leaf and Bolt owners to pay to use his network… which would increase the wait times for Tesla owners, ruining their Premium Experience.
In fact, with the explosive sales of the Model 3, you’re already starting to see this happen. Google “supercharger wait Thanksgiving” to see lines stretching for 50 cars a month ago. Now imagine a similar queue in 2015, not full of other Tesla’s, but full of <$30k Nissans. No one who paid $90k for a Model S would tolerate that nonsense.