#General Automotive Repair

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Autoenshittification

Forget F1: the only car race that matters now is the race to turn your car into a digital extraction machine, a high-speed inkjet printer on wheels, stealing your private data as it picks your pocket. Your car’s digital infrastructure is a costly, dangerous nightmare — but for automakers in pursuit of postcapitalist utopia, it’s a dream they can’t give up on.

Your car is stuffed full of microchips, a fact the world came to appreciate after the pandemic struck and auto production ground to a halt due to chip shortages. Of course, that wasn’t the whole story: when the pandemic started, the automakers panicked and canceled their chip orders, only to immediately regret that decision and place new orders.

But it was too late: semiconductor production had taken a serious body-blow, and when Big Car placed its new chip orders, it went to the back of a long, slow-moving line. It was a catastrophic bungle: microchips are so integral to car production that a car is basically a computer network on wheels that you stick your fragile human body into and pray.

The car manufacturers got so desperate for chips that they started buying up washing machines for the microchips in them, extracting the chips and discarding the washing machines like some absurdo-dystopian cyberpunk walnut-shelling machine:

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/desperate-times-companies-buy-washing-machines-just-to-rip-out-the-chips-187033.html

These digital systems are a huge problem for the car companies. They are the underlying cause of a precipitous decline in car quality. From touch-based digital door-locks to networked sensors and cameras, every digital system in your car is a source of endless repair nightmares, costly recalls and cybersecurity vulnerabilities:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/quality-new-vehicles-us-declining-more-tech-use-study-shows-2023-06-22/

What’s more, drivers hate all the digital bullshit, from the janky touchscreens to the shitty, wildly insecure apps. Digital systems are drivers’ most significant point of dissatisfaction with the automakers’ products:

https://www.theverge.com/23801545/car-infotainment-customer-satisifaction-survey-jd-power

Even the automakers sorta-kinda admit that this is a problem. Back in 2020 when Massachusetts was having a Right-to-Repair ballot initiative, Big Car ran these unfuckingbelievable scare ads that basically said, “Your car spies on you so comprehensively that giving anyone else access to its systems will let murderers stalk you to your home and kill you:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

But even amid all the complaining about cars getting stuck in the Internet of Shit, there’s still not much discussion of why the car-makers are making their products less attractive, less reliable, less safe, and less resilient by stuffing them full of microchips. Are car execs just the latest generation of rubes who’ve been suckered by Silicon Valley bullshit and convinced that apps are a magic path to profitability?

Nope. Car execs are sophisticated businesspeople, and they’re surfing capitalism’s latest — and last — hot trend: dismantling capitalism itself.

Now, leftists have been predicting the death of capitalism since The Communist Manifesto, but even Marx and Engels warned us not to get too frisky: capitalism, they wrote, is endlessly creative, constantly reinventing itself, re-emerging from each crisis in a new form that is perfectly adapted to the post-crisis reality:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/review/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html

But capitalism has finally run out of gas. In his forthcoming book, Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis proposes that capitalism has died — but it wasn’t replaced by socialism. Rather, capitalism has given way to feudalism:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451795/technofeudalism-by-varoufakis-yanis/9781847927279

Under capitalism, capital is the prime mover. The people who own and mobilize capital — the capitalists — organize the economy and take the lion’s share of its returns. But it wasn’t always this way: for hundreds of years, European civilization was dominated by rents, not markets.

A “rent” is income that you get from owning something that other people need to produce value. Think of renting out a house you own: not only do you get paid when someone pays you to live there, you also get the benefit of rising property values, which are the result of the work that all the other homeowners, business owners, and residents do to make the neighborhood more valuable.

The first capitalists hated rent. They wanted to replace the “passive income” that landowners got from taxing their serfs’ harvest with active income from enclosing those lands and grazing sheep in order to get wool to feed to the new textile mills. They wanted active income — and lots of it.

Capitalist philosophers railed against rent. The “free market” of Adam Smith wasn’t a market that was free from regulation — it was a market free from rents. The reason Smith railed against monopolists is because he (correctly) understood that once a monopoly emerged, it would become a chokepoint through which a rentier could cream off the profits he considered the capitalist’s due:

https://locusmag.com/2021/03/cory-doctorow-free-markets/

Today, we live in a rentier’s paradise. People don’t aspire to create value — they aspire to capture it. In Survival of the Richest, Doug Rushkoff calls this “going meta”: don’t provide a service, just figure out a way to interpose yourself between the provider and the customer:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn

Don’t drive a cab, create Uber and extract value from every driver and rider. Better still: don’t found Uber, invest in Uber options and extract value from the people who invest in Uber. Even better, invest in derivatives of Uber options and extract value from people extracting value from people investing in Uber, who extract value from drivers and riders. Go meta.

This is your brain on the four-hour-work-week, passive income mind-virus. In Techno Feudalism, Varoufakis deftly describes how the new “Cloud Capital” has created a new generation of rentiers, and how they have become the richest, most powerful people in human history.

Shopping at Amazon is like visiting a bustling city center full of stores — but each of those stores’ owners has to pay the majority of every sale to a feudal landlord, Emperor Jeff Bezos, who also decides which goods they can sell and where they must appear on the shelves. Amazon is full of capitalists, but it is not a capitalist enterprise. It’s a feudal one:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

This is the reason that automakers are willing to enshittify their products so comprehensively: they were one of the first industries to decouple rents from profits. Recall that the reason that Big Car needed billions in bailouts in 2008 is that they’d reinvented themselves as loan-sharks who incidentally made cars, lending money to car-buyers and then “securitizing” the loans so they could be traded in the capital markets.

Even though this strategy brought the car companies to the brink of ruin, it paid off in the long run. The car makers got billions in public money, paid their execs massive bonuses, gave billions to shareholders in buybacks and dividends, smashed their unions, fucked their pensioned workers, and shipped jobs anywhere they could pollute and murder their workforce with impunity.

Car companies are on the forefront of postcapitalism, and they understand that digital is the key to rent-extraction. Remember when BMW announced that it was going to rent you the seatwarmer in your own fucking car?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/02/big-river/#beemers

Not to be outdone, Mercedes announced that they were going to rent you your car’s accelerator pedal, charging an extra $1200/year to unlock a fully functional acceleration curve:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23474969/mercedes-car-subscription-faster-acceleration-feature-price

This is the urinary tract infection business model: without digitization, all your car’s value flowed in a healthy stream. But once the car-makers add semiconductors, each one of those features comes out in a painful, burning dribble, with every button on that fakakta touchscreen wired directly into your credit-card.

But it’s just for starters. Computers are malleable. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing Complete Von Neumann Machine, which can run every program we know how to write. Once they add networked computers to your car, the Car Lords can endlessly twiddle the knobs on the back end, finding new ways to extract value from you:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

That means that your car can track your every movement, and sell your location data to anyone and everyone, from marketers to bounty-hunters looking to collect fees for tracking down people who travel out of state for abortions to cops to foreign spies:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7enex/tool-shows-if-car-selling-data-privacy4cars-vehicle-privacy-report

Digitization supercharges financialization. It lets car-makers offer subprime auto-loans to desperate, poor people and then killswitch their cars if they miss a payment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2eDJnwz_s

Subprime lending for cars would be a terrible business without computers, but digitization makes it a great source of feudal rents. Car dealers can originate loans to people with teaser rates that quickly blow up into payments the dealer knows their customer can’t afford. Then they repo the car and sell it to another desperate person, and another, and another:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/27/boricua/#looking-for-the-joke-with-a-microscope

Digitization also opens up more exotic options. Some subprime cars have secondary control systems wired into their entertainment system: miss a payment and your car radio flips to full volume and bellows an unstoppable, unmutable stream of threats. Tesla does one better: your car will lock and immobilize itself, then blare its horn and back out of its parking spot when the repo man arrives:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

Digital feudalism hasn’t stopped innovating — it’s just stopped innovating good things. The digital device is an endless source of sadistic novelties, like the cellphones that disable your most-used app the first day you’re late on a payment, then work their way down the other apps you rely on for every day you’re late:

https://restofworld.org/2021/loans-that-hijack-your-phone-are-coming-to-india/

Usurers have always relied on this kind of imaginative intimidation. The loan-shark’s arm-breaker knows you’re never going to get off the hook; his goal is in intimidating you into paying his boss first, liquidating your house and your kid’s college fund and your wedding ring before you default and he throws you off a building.

Thanks to the malleability of computerized systems, digital arm-breakers have an endless array of options they can deploy to motivate you into paying them first, no matter what it costs you:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Car-makers are trailblazers in imaginative rent-extraction. Take VIN-locking: this is the practice of adding cheap microchips to engine components that communicate with the car’s overall network. After a new part is installed in your car, your car’s computer does a complex cryptographic handshake with the part that requires an unlock code provided by an authorized technician. If the code isn’t entered, the car refuses to use that part.

VIN-locking has exploded in popularity. It’s in your iPhone, preventing you from using refurb or third-party replacement parts:

https://doctorow.medium.com/apples-cement-overshoes-329856288d13

It’s in fuckin’ ventilators, which was a nightmare during lockdown as hospital techs nursed their precious ventilators along by swapping parts from dead systems into serviceable ones:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3azv9b/why-repair-techs-are-hacking-ventilators-with-diy-dongles-from-poland

And of course, it’s in tractors, along with other forms of remote killswitch. Remember that feelgood story about John Deere bricking the looted Ukrainian tractors whose snitch-chips showed they’d been relocated to Russia?

https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors-bc93f471b9c8

That wasn’t a happy story — it was a cautionary tale. After all, John Deere now controls the majority of the world’s agricultural future, and they’ve boobytrapped those ubiquitous tractors with killswitches that can be activated by anyone who hacks, takes over, or suborns Deere or its dealerships.

Control over repair isn’t limited to gouging customers on parts and service. When a company gets to decide whether your device can be fixed, it can fuck you over in all kinds of ways. Back in 2019, Tim Apple told his shareholders to expect lower revenues because people were opting to fix their phones rather than replace them:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-to-apple-investors/

By usurping your right to decide who fixes your phone, Apple gets to decide whether you can fix it, or whether you must replace it. Problem solved — and not just for Apple, but for car makers, tractor makers, ventilator makers and more. Apple leads on this, even ahead of Big Car, pioneering a “recycling” program that sees trade-in phones shredded so they can’t possibly be diverted from an e-waste dump and mined for parts:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks

John Deere isn’t sleeping on this. They’ve come up with a valuable treasure they extract when they win the Right-to-Repair: Deere singles out farmers who complain about its policies and refuses to repair their tractors, stranding them with six-figure, two-ton paperweight:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/31/dealers-choice/#be-a-shame-if-something-were-to-happen-to-it

The repair wars are just a skirmish in a vast, invisible fight that’s been waged for decades: the War On General-Purpose Computing, where tech companies use the law to make it illegal for you to reconfigure your devices so they serve you, rather than their shareholders:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

The force behind this army is vast and grows larger every day. General purpose computers are antithetical to technofeudalism — all the rents extracted by technofeudalists would go away if others (tinkereres, co-ops, even capitalists!) were allowed to reconfigure our devices so they serve us.

You’ve probably noticed the skirmishes with inkjet printer makers, who can only force you to buy their ink at 20,000% markups if they can stop you from deciding how your printer is configured:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/inky-wretches/#epson-salty But we’re also fighting against insulin pump makers, who want to turn people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/10/loopers/#hp-ification

And companies that make powered wheelchairs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/08/chair-ish/#r2r

These companies start with people who have the least agency and social power and wreck their lives, then work their way up the privilege gradient, coming for everyone else. It’s called the “shitty technology adoption curve”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

Technofeudalism is the public-private-partnership from hell, emerging from a combination of state and private action. On the one hand, bailing out bankers and big business (rather than workers) after the 2008 crash and the covid lockdown decoupled income from profits. Companies spent billions more than they earned were still wildly profitable, thanks to those public funds.

But there’s also a policy dimension here. Some of those rentiers’ billions were mobilized to both deconstruct antitrust law (allowing bigger and bigger companies and cartels) and to expand “IP” law, turning “IP” into a toolsuite for controlling the conduct of a firm’s competitors, critics and customers:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

IP is key to understanding the rise of technofeudalism. The same malleability that allows companies to “twiddle” the knobs on their services and keep us on the hook as they reel us in would hypothetically allow us to countertwiddle, seizing the means of computation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

The thing that stands between you and an alternative app store, an interoperable social media network that you can escape to while continuing to message the friends you left behind, or a car that anyone can fix or unlock features for is IP, not technology. Under capitalism, that technology would already exist, because capitalists have no loyalty to one another and view each other’s margins as their own opportunities.

But under technofeudalism, control comes from rents (owning things), not profits (selling things). The capitalist who wants to participate in your iPhone’s “ecosystem” has to make apps and submit them to Apple, along with 30% of their lifetime revenues — they don’t get to sell you jailbreaking kit that lets you choose their app store.

Rent-seeking technology has a holy grail: control over “ring zero” — the ability to compel you to configure your computer to a feudalist’s specifications, and to verify that you haven’t altered your computer after it came into your possession:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/30/ring-minus-one/#drm-political-economy

For more than two decades, various would-be feudal lords and their court sorcerers have been pitching ways of doing this, of varying degrees of outlandishness.

At core, here’s what they envision: inside your computer, they will nest another computer, one that is designed to run a very simple set of programs, none of which can be altered once it leaves the factory. This computer — either a whole separate chip called a “Trusted Platform Module” or a region of your main processor called a secure enclave — can tally observations about your computer: which operating system, modules and programs it’s running.

Then it can cryptographically “sign” these observations, proving that they were made by a secure chip and not by something you could have modified. Then you can send this signed “attestation” to someone else, who can use it to determine how your computer is configured and thus whether to trust it. This is called “remote attestation.”

There are some cool things you can do with remote attestation: for example, two strangers playing a networked video game together can use attestations to make sure neither is running any cheat modules. Or you could require your cloud computing provider to use attestations that they aren’t stealing your data from the server you’re renting. Or if you suspect that your computer has been infected with malware, you can connect to someone else and send them an attestation that they can use to figure out whether you should trust it.

Today, there’s a cool remote attestation technology called “PrivacyPass” that replaces CAPTCHAs by having you prove to your own device that you are a human. When a server wants to make sure you’re a person, it sends a random number to your device, which signs that number along with its promise that it is acting on behalf of a human being, and sends it back. CAPTCHAs are all kinds of bad — bad for accessibility and privacy — and this is really great.

But the billions that have been thrown at remote attestation over the decades is only incidentally about solving CAPTCHAs or verifying your cloud server. The holy grail here is being able to make sure that you’re not running an ad-blocker. It’s being able to remotely verify that you haven’t disabled the bossware your employer requires. It’s the power to block someone from opening an Office365 doc with LibreOffice. It’s your boss’s ability to ensure that you haven’t modified your messaging client to disable disappearing messages before he sends you an auto-destructing memo ordering you to break the law.

And there’s a new remote attestation technology making the rounds: Google’s Web Environment Integrity, which will leverage Google’s dominance over browsers to allow websites to block users who run ad-blockers:

https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity

There’s plenty else WEI can do (it would make detecting ad-fraud much easier), but for every legitimate use, there are a hundred ways this could be abused. It’s a technology purpose-built to allow rent extraction by stripping us of our right to technological self-determination.

Releasing a technology like this into a world where companies are willing to make their products less reliable, less attractive, less safe and less resilient in pursuit of rents is incredibly reckless and shortsighted. You want unauthorized bread? This is how you get Unauthorized Bread:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/amp/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

[Image ID: The interior of a luxury car. There is a dagger protruding from the steering wheel. The entertainment console has been replaced by the text 'You wouldn't download a car,' in MPAA scare-ad font. Outside of the windscreen looms the Matrix waterfall effect. Visible in the rear- and side-view mirror is the driver: the figure from Munch's 'Scream.' The screen behind the steering-wheel has been replaced by the menacing red eye of HAL9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.']

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[automotivetaylored]

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[airconditioningrepair0]

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[pierceconstructionandrepair]

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[carrepairshop]

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[ritchieautoelectrics]

Best Battery Charging Service Slacks Creek

Your dream vehicle is one of the most prized possessions in your life. We offer a wide range of services, including battery charging service, reconditioned starter motors, and air conditioning repairs, to name a few. Get in touch with us today and know more about our services.

[collapsedsquid]

For many electric vehicles, there is no way to repair or assess even slightly damaged battery packs after accidents, forcing insurance companies to write off cars with few miles - leading to higher premiums and undercutting gains from going electric.

And now those battery packs are piling up in scrapyards in some countries, a previously unreported and expensive gap in what was supposed to be a "circular economy."

"We're buying electric cars for sustainability reasons," said Matthew Avery, research director at automotive risk intelligence company Thatcham Research. "But an EV isn't very sustainable if you've got to throw the battery away after a minor collision."

Battery packs can cost tens of thousands of dollars and represent up to 50% of an EV's price tag, often making it uneconomical to replace them.

While some automakers like Ford Motor Co (F.N) and General Motors Co (GM.N) said they have made battery packs easier to repair, Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) has taken the opposite tack with its Texas-built Model Y, whose new structural battery pack has been described by experts as having "zero repairability."

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

💩

[spicy-vent-central]

Also, the fact that "younger generations have no common sense or practical skills" is so fucking intentional. It is such a capitalist oppression thing, for literally every person.

TL;DR: PLEASE understand that there's a really good chance that it's capitalism's fault that young people "have no common sense or practical skills" not your meemaws fault or your grandkids fault, y'know?

For example in the US, people who became adults during the great depression (the great grandparents of Millennials/Gen Z), knew how to do a huge amount of practical, everyday things. They could farm, do household repairs, many of them had carpentry skills and automotive/equipment repair skills. They made many of their own clothes, grew and preserved most of their own food, etcetera. This meant they held little need for the larger capitalist system and had very little motivation to uphold it if it mistreated them. They did not have many material assets but they had valuable knowledge that made them more independent from capitalism.

Now look at Gen Z, we are becoming adults in a time in America where we have EVEN LESS purchasing power than our Great Depression counterparts. On top of that, factually, we have exponentially less individuals with this large variety of everyday skills. So for many of us, when our car breaks down, we have no knowledge on how to fix it and we own no assets. All we can do is sell our time in order to pay someone else to do it. When we are hungry, we have minimal access to land, many of us don't have the knowledge and skills to grow our own food, we have to sell our time in order to go to a grocery store so that we can eat. Unfortunately, we as a generation "need" capitalism for this because we do not have the skills to do these things on our own anymore.

Now the question is why don't we have these skills? Well, I've seen a couple schools of thought but I think both of them are at least partially incorrect.

1) Kids today just don't care about stuff like that and don't want to learn! Kids have never wanted to learn "boring" adult skills. Kids have and always will be kids, but as adults we appreciate these skills and understand the value of knowing them and passing them on to your kids (even if they find it boring). PLUS, many kids do have interest in these things if they're encouraged to give it a chance. I don't think this is truly the issue.

2) Boomers didn't care to teach us! They were lazy and now we are suffering!! They likely didn't believe these skills were necessary for young people anymore. From their perspective the economy had been flourishing for as long as they could remember, why believe that would change? I'm not saying the lack of foresight isn't detrimental, but the viewpoint can be explained. I don't think this is a notable part of the overall issue either.

These two schools of thought lead us as the working class to blame each other for the deficit. It divides us. I propose a third theory on the matter: these skills were systematically stomped out in younger generations to make us more reliant on capitalism. Through assorted methods:

- removal of hands-on classes from school through budget cutting, etc (wood shop, agriculture, home ec, automotive, etc) (PS: this is isn't a "bring back gender roles" take just because I included home ec in the list, every gender should learn home skills like cooking, mending and cleaning, as well as skills such as automotive and carpentry.)

- distraction via the promotion of unhealthy overconsumption of media (video game/TV/social media addiction) (PS: this is not a "technology bad" take, tech is fine but OVERconsumption of media is unhealthy and is even a problem in older generations now.)

- devaluation of these skills via the conflation of them with an archaic and backward social period (Yes, people in older generations were and largely still are racist, sexist, homophobic, and that's fucked. That doesn't mean growing and canning your own food or learning from peepaw how to fix a carburetor makes you any of those things.)

- the manufactured institution of lawns, "landscape" and HOA's preventing us from growing our own food at home on the land we DO have access to

- many others I don't feel like unpacking here as I'm already writing a novel in this post apparently, but you get my meaning

So I guess my point is that we need to unpack our feelings on this and understand that there's a really good chance that it's capitalism's fault that young people "have no common sense or practical skills" not your meemaws fault or your grandkids fault, y'know? As the working class we have to stop punching left and right and start punching up. Also, since I already hear "but boomers own all the stuff and bought their house for $5 in 1970!" (which is a valid sentiment) I share with you an important (paraphrased) quote I heard the other day:

"When the lord of the land commands the people to go out and work his lands in the sun, your enemy is not the man who is wearing a hat."

Other generations aren't the real enemy here y'all, it's the capitalist billionaires. Please see that.

[yourwinchesterbros]

NEW FIC RELEASE DATE!

Hello all! I’m super excited to announce the release date of my SOA X SPN crossover fic – Coming soon near you!

Introducing SUPERNATURAL MAYHEM    

A story where the Sons of Anarchy meet the Winchester Brothers.

Premiering a love triangle between Jax Teller, Dean Winchester and YOU! Will you choose the dangerous life of a hunter or will you choose madness with the sons? 

Set to be released 06.10.23.

Takes place after my Jax Teller fic “Rule Breaker” https://www.tumblr.com/yourwinchesterbros/694609038960361472/rule-breaker-part-one?source=share

To help prepare! Below is a guide to understanding terminology within these worlds. This is built to help readers better understand the meaning behind these words without ever seeing the shows. For those of you who have seen SOA or SPN  you should know these *wink wink*

Charming: A small town in California where the SONS (Sons of Anarchy) clubhouse and automotive repair shop is located.

Old lady: Old Lady is the girlfriend/wife of a SAMCRO member. Under the club rules, an Old Lady is supposed to be shown total respect by all club members and outsiders.

Reaper: Commonly known as Jax Teller.

Men of Mayhem: Men of Mayhem is the rank and patch given to those SAMCRO members who have killed in the group’s name, meaning most members wore that patch on their kuttes (Leather vests).

Djinn: A monster from supernatural that possesses powers to cause victims to hallucinate whilst they feed on their blood.

Baby: Dean Winchesters vehicle, the Impala.

Church: Refers to a scheduled club meeting at the reaper engraved table. 

Gavel: Ceremonial wooden hammer used to lock in decisions and votes made within the members of the club during church.

Hunter: Someone who specifically specializes in hunting monsters.

Trigger Warnings: Smoking, Use/mention of Weapons, Kidnapping, Violence, Cursing, Light smut & fluff! Overall, the general theme of both shows combined. Will attach this post with the fic :)

10k+ Words so I may break it up into two parts!

If you’re interested in delving into this fic once it is out- please let me know and I’ll add you to the tag list! Tagging my mutuals if you’re interested in this read but no pressure if it’s not for you 🖤  @alohomorasomnium @withmyteeth @jvalentinesworld-cokes-hyna @witchthewriter @rayslittlekitten @darklydeliciousdesires @darqchilddaydreamz @spaghettificationandpretzels @impala-dreamer @saracatherine @samcro-jnt 

[pokenursery]

FROM HERE

@average-bug-type-enjoyer replied:

Well i work in an automotive repair shop in southeast Unova, and we use a lot of steel, electric, water, psychic or fighting types to help with more demanding tasks. For example my Mareep, Cotton helps to jumpstart cars and occasionally power tools. the pokemon in my home are a wide variety of types and species but they all tend to be small to medium and even-tempered. As for in my general area its a bit less predictable but so long as a pokemon can deal with the semi-urban environment than it should be ok. hope that helps, lemme know if you need any more information <3 //ooc { gotta be vague since i still haven’t figured out exactly what pokemon Average is gonna have :/ also i have covid 😔}

Aspen rubbed a hand over his mouth, thinking about it. "Automotive repair, you say... well, I can't promise temperament in an egg, but if that's what you want I have some ideas for what might suit you."

He dropped his hand to cross his arms, squinting as he thought hard about what might suit Average's home and work situation.

Then it dawned on him.

"Klefki." He grinned broadly. "They're not even a foot tall, so they'll fit at home. They're almost universally even tempered 'mons. They can be trained to eat scrap metal and then cut down on any scrap or unusable parts -- they don't mind rust, so it cuts down your trips to the landfill. And they will happily keep track of your car keys or any others; the old fancy folk would give them vault keys, even. Train 'em up young and they'll be happy to trade out keys for new ones or snacks of metal, though, and you won't have to deal with them fighting to keep the keys.

"What do you say, Average?" He asked. "If I can find a Klefki egg, would you want it?"

//ooc = You're fine! Please rest up and feel better! There isn't a time limit on this, but hit that Like to let me know you got this and @' me when you reblog or something. Notifs are being bad.

[shittysawtraps]

Congratulations, Skyler. You may have lost your fingernails, but maybe now you won't misgender your kid.

So many people do not appreciate the gift of life. But not you - not anym...

Hold on, I just got a text, let me read this.

(loud sighing)

God dammit, could have told me this before...

It sounds like your child isn't the only thing you're mistreating. Dumping used motor oil down storm drains? Flushing your unused medications? Helping your company cover up garbage burning operations in Laos?

You've contributed to obscene abuses of nature, so the game must continue. So tell me, Skyler, do you like the smell of automotive exhaust? Because the generator in this warehouse doesn't vent properly, and the warehouse has been filling up with carbon monoxide the whole time you were playing your other game. If you can escape some other way, you're free to go - or, most of you will be, at least.

This is totally deliberate, and not just because I'm finding out that Hoffman killed the repair guy instead of paying to fix the exhaust system last week. If he's lying about your pollution record, uh, sorry for killing you over nothing.

[imperialchem]

Preserving Assets:  The Role of Corrosion Inhibitors in Industrial Maintenance

Corrosion is a persistent threat to industrial assets, causing billions of dollars in damages annually across various sectors.  From oil and gas facilities to manufacturing plants, the impact of corrosion can be devastating, leading to equipment failures, production downtime, and costly repairs.  However, with the right preventive measures in place, such as corrosion inhibitors, industrial facilities can effectively mitigate the risk of corrosion and prolong the lifespan of their assets.  As a leading chemical company in Vadodara, Imperial Oilfield Chemicals Pvt. Ltd. (ICPL) understands the critical role of corrosion inhibitors in industrial maintenance.  In this blog post, we'll explore the importance of corrosion inhibitors, their applications, and the expertise of ICPL as a corrosion inhibitor manufacturer and exporter in India.

Understanding Corrosion Inhibitors

Corrosion inhibitors are chemical compounds designed to protect metal surfaces from the damaging effects of corrosion.  By forming a protective barrier on the metal surface or altering the corrosion process, inhibitors prevent or slow down the oxidation and deterioration of metals in corrosive environments.  Corrosion inhibitors are widely used in various industries, including oil and gas, petrochemicals, power generation, water treatment, and manufacturing, to safeguard critical assets and infrastructure from corrosion-related failures.

The Importance of Corrosion Inhibitors in Industrial Maintenance

1.   Asset Protection:  Industrial facilities rely heavily on equipment and infrastructure made of metal, such as pipelines, tanks, vessels, and machinery.  Corrosion inhibitors play a crucial role in protecting these assets from corrosion, extending their service life and reducing the need for frequent repairs or replacements.

2.   Cost Savings:  Corrosion-related failures can result in significant financial losses due to equipment downtime, production disruptions, and repair expenses.  By incorporating corrosion inhibitors into maintenance programs, industries can minimize the risk of corrosion-related failures and realize substantial cost savings in the long run.

3.   Safety and Reliability:  Corrosion compromises the structural integrity of industrial assets, posing safety hazards to personnel and the surrounding environment.  Corrosion inhibitors help maintain the reliability and safety of critical infrastructure, reducing the likelihood of accidents, spills, and environmental contamination.

4.   Environmental Protection:  Corrosion-related leaks and spills can have detrimental environmental consequences, polluting soil, water bodies, and ecosystems.  By preventing corrosion and minimizing the risk of leaks and spills, corrosion inhibitors contribute to environmental protection and sustainability efforts.

Applications of Corrosion Inhibitors

Corrosion inhibitors find applications across various industrial sectors, where metal components are exposed to corrosive environments.  Some common applications of corrosion inhibitors include:

Oil and Gas Production:  In the oil and gas industry, corrosion inhibitors are used to protect pipelines, well casings, and production equipment from corrosion caused by corrosive fluids, gases, and environmental conditions.

Water Treatment:  Corrosion inhibitors are added to cooling water systems, boilers, and wastewater treatment facilities to prevent metal corrosion caused by dissolved oxygen, scale formation, and aggressive ions.

Manufacturing:  In manufacturing processes involving metal components, such as automotive, aerospace, and electronics manufacturing, corrosion inhibitors are used to protect parts, components, and machinery from corrosion during production, storage, and transportation.

Marine and Offshore Structures:  Corrosion inhibitors are applied to marine vessels, offshore platforms, and coastal structures to protect against corrosion in seawater environments.

ICPL:  Your Trusted Corrosion Inhibitor Manufacturer and Exporter in India

As the best chemical company in Vadodara, ICPL is dedicated to delivering high-quality corrosion inhibitors tailored to the specific needs of industrial clients.  Here's why ICPL is the preferred choice for corrosion inhibitors in India:

Expertise and Experience:  With decades of experience in the chemical industry, ICPL possesses the expertise and technical know-how to develop and manufacture corrosion inhibitors that meet the highest quality standards and regulatory requirements.

State-of-the-Art Facilities:  ICPL operates state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities equipped with advanced technologies and production processes to ensure the consistent quality and performance of its corrosion inhibitors.

Customized Solutions:  ICPL offers customized corrosion inhibitor formulations tailored to the unique requirements and operating conditions of industrial applications.  Our team of experts works closely with clients to develop solutions that address specific corrosion challenges and performance objectives.

Global Reach:  As a corrosion inhibitor exporter in India, ICPL serves clients worldwide, exporting its products to diverse markets across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and beyond.  With a strong global presence and distribution network, ICPL delivers reliable corrosion protection solutions to industries around the globe.

Conclusion

In conclusion, corrosion inhibitors play a crucial role in industrial maintenance by protecting metal assets from the damaging effects of corrosion.  As a leading corrosion inhibitor manufacturer and exporter in India, ICPL is committed to providing high-quality corrosion inhibitors that safeguard critical infrastructure, ensure operational reliability, and promote cost-effective maintenance practices.  With ICPL's expertise, customized solutions, and global reach, industries can effectively mitigate the risk of corrosion and preserve the integrity of their assets for years to come.  Contact ICPL today to learn more about our corrosion inhibitor products and solutions.

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[chronivore]

Sunday, August 5, 1888, noted German automotive pioneer Bertha Benz (née Ringer 1849-1944), wife & business partner of automobile inventor Karl Friedrich Benz (1844-1929), made the world’s first cross-country automobile journey.

☞Bertha’s husband Karl, with Bertha’s financial backing, had invented what is generally regarded as the world’s first automobile, the Benz Patent Motorwagen, & although he had built three of them by 1888, he had only driven them on short test drives.

☞According to Wikipedia: “Mercedes-Benz traces its origins to Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft’s 1901 Mercedes & Karl Benz’s 1886 Benz Patent-Motorwagen, which is widely regarded as the first gasoline-powered automobile.”

☞On August 5, 1888, without informing her husband, & without the permission of the authorities, Bertha Benz took her sons Richard & Eugen, ages thirteen & fifteen, for the historic trip in Benz Patent Motorwagen № 3 from Mannheim to Pforzheim, a distance of about 66 miles.

☞Ostensibly, the purpose of her trip was to visit her mother; however, Bertha Benz had other motives: to prove to her husband, who had failed to consider marketing his invention adequately, that the automobile that they had both heavily invested in would become a financial success once it was shown to be useful to the general public, & to give her husband the confidence that his invention had a future.

☞Along the way, Bertha had to solve numerous technical problems. The Benz Motorwagen ran on ligroin, also known as benzine, which is a type of naptha or cleaning solvent that was available only at apothecary shops, so she stopped in Wiesloch at the city pharmacy to purchase the fuel. A blacksmith had to help mend a drive chain at one point. When the brakes needed to be repaired, Bertha Benz invented brake linings. She also used a hatpin to clean a clogged fuel line, & she insulated an ignition wire with a garter.

☞Bertha Benz left Mannheim around dawn & reached Pforzheim somewhat after dusk, notifying her husband of her successful journey by electric telegraph. She drove back to Mannheim the next day.

☞The undated illustration depicts Bertha Benz along with her sons Eugen & Richard at an apothecary shop to by benzene to fuel the Benz Patent Motorwagen during the world’s first cross-country automobile journey in August 1888.

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[ritchieautoelectrics]

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