#fake exhausts

[things-about-cars-in-posts]

went to a sim racing facility for the first time!! having never raced or driven in my life, I set a somewhat ok 58.1 in a Fiat Abarth 500 Assetto Corsa around Brands Hatch Indy.

In honor of this, do you have any Fun Fiat Facts?

Whipped out me sim rig to find out how good a time that was, and it must have taken me around ten laps to manage less (a 57.8)! (Gamer excuses for this sessions are a framerate barely at illusion-of-movement levels and some clutch mapping issue that made most shifts crunch.) For someone who never even drove, that's quite good! Now, maybe not "Run get a sim wheel right now for the good of humanity" good... but maybe "Finding out a used Logitech G25 is Christmas-present cheap may enrich your free time" good.

As for the Fun Fiat Fact request, it's denied: not only because I've already written about Fiat -and for my very first post no less- but most importantly because that car is not a Fiat! Indeed, since 2007 Abarth is, officially, a brand unto itself, that sells models like the 500 and the 124, just like Fiat sells models like the 500 and the 124. Now, I don't think anyone is going to try and pretend the similarities are just a coincidence or that an Abarth 500 is in any way not objectively a Fiat - but it's not a "Fiat 500 Abarth" any more than the one below is a "Chevrolet Cavalier Toyota".

That's right, there once was such thing as a Toyota Cavalier. Oh, brand engineering.

This is a rare but not completely isolated arrangement - see for example Ruf, German brand that makes vehicles based on Porsches, best known for the Ruf CTR -nicknamed "Yellowbird"- that bested the Ferrari F40's incredible top speed record.

Be careful who you call ugly under the 200mph barrier.

But yeah, all that is to say, I am not going to give you any fun Fiat facts. >:(

Let's give you fun Abarth facts then! Let's talk about fake exhausts. Big engines move a lot of gas -that's kind of the point- so they have big exhaust pipes for all that gas to leave, and high-tier exhausts are made of fancy materials that shine.

This -and our love for fancy shiny things in general- makes people like big shiny exhausts. But exhausts are very long, and making them big and shiny is costly. So people figured, what if we only make it wide at the end, where you actually see it?

After all, if the tip is large enough, it will satisfy regardless of what the rest of its length is like - sure, people may think it looks a bit weird when you take it out, but that only happens by the time you've already scored, doesn't it. But now, back to exhausts.

If you can just attach a bigger tip to the end of your exhaust, surely you can attach a tip of a different material and have a bog standard exhaust with a cool shiny tip, that now you can also shape to your designer's content!

(Fun fact: an aftermarket exhaust system that only replaces the components that come after the catalytic converter -which, contrary to the popular misconception that confuses it with the muffler, is mounted right beside the engine- is called a "catback exhaust". Picture unrelated.)

But then, if the tip material is completely separate from the exhaust pipe, you can now just make it a plastic part of the bumper and it doesn't need to withstand temperatures as high and is even cheaper and easier to style!

And now that they're not mounted on the tip of the exhaust, they don't have to coincide with it, so you can split the exhaust into two tips, which is cooler because they're more! Hell, you can also do that by just making the exhaust coincide with one tip and have the other blanked off!

But at that point, why even have the exhaust show up back there at all? Just make the tips blank and make the exhaust go down behind them!

And at that point why not just fuck it up to the point where you need this exhaust evolutionary biology 101 course to even recognize it is meant to be an exhaust, if we can kill God who's left to stop us from dancing on his corpse.

Well, the Abarth 500, as you might have guessed by now, has fake exhaust tips. But here's the weird thing: the real exhaust tips are not any less shiny and prominent than the fake ones. See for yourself in this sound video.

Oh also, I hope the devil got some killer stuff from the deal he made with the Abarth exhaust engineer, because if he only got a piddly little soul in exchange for the ability to turn 500 engine noise into this he got majorly screwed over.

Links in blue are posts of mine explaining the words in question - if you liked this post, you might like those!

[lem0nademouth]

something so insidious abt left wing antisemitism is that its all psychological mind games and manipulation and denial and gaslighting and making you question your own perception of reality. like its not enough to hate jews, no, you have to resolve your own cognitive dissonance about being a leftist who hates jews by victim blaming and outright lying. you cannot sit in your own discomfort and acknowledge that you have work to do, so you make it our problem. you slit our throats and force us to apologize for bleeding on you.

[architectural-sims]

Slowly turning Ciudad Enamorada into La Habana

[betweenmee]

[mil-hoples]

things are getting worse
i don't know what to do

[fishyartist]

Ui idea tests, thrown together bc im eepy. Was planning on doing more but I spent all my days energy on the second one oops

[teaboot]

You're so genuine, how do you stay so true to you?

I think I just never considered the possibility of an alternative

[honey-doc]

It’s really interesting to me how Kabru isn’t hiding how uninterested he is in Laios’s monster talk ever since he learned how to be candid while being alone with Mithrun

Before:

After:

[watcher0033]

Almost 1AM and this exchange brought me to tears.

Hear here, we’ll never stop till the world listens. It’s not forever. It’s now.

[deadtotheworld597]

[malzykins]

POKETOWER

[awakenthebeing]

I'M SORRY I'LL LIKE,, Never draw any other characters these 2 are just my FAVORITES....💓💓‼️😭😭😭 and it's ultimately just a lot of friend hugs

[profounddefendorcrusade-blog]

Starlo's personality

I'm still confused about this man's 'true self,' gotta admit. How much of 'himself' IS there in 'North Star'?

What we know about real Star:

He's a nerd/geek obsessed with westerns; that's where he got the inspiration to build WE

He looks different than with the hat on and used to wear braces

Was shy in his teenage years around Ceroba (no idea how he acted normally) + couldn't confess to her

His mom (after killing him) says how he's never been the one to follow rules. I wonder what she meant by that. Rules, like, you're supposed to hate humans like everyone else or rules, like, no sneaking off to practice your shooting and lasso skills? Both?

Ed describes the 'old him' as a fearless leader and as a monster who could 'make his own fun in the little things' (you mean he used to be more humble but at the same time remained an ambitious risk-taker?)

Is insecure about where he comes from and what he looks like

We don't have enough info to know what he was like as a kid. I'm curious if absolutely everything about North Star is the opposite of Starlo (I don't think it is); both are kind and protective. Still, I can't help but wonder if the Starlo after Showdown, in both routes, is the real him or not. Maybe 50% yes and 50% no

Just from the end credits, the only thing I got about him was that he's kind and friendly and optimistic and charming (North Star is this way too, but more exaggerated). Nothing new

So maybe Starlo IS North Star, but more modest (aka not as exaggerated)

I'm curious about your thoughts guys.

Also I forgot to mention how he wanted to plan a PARTY for Kanako, in neutral says that the PARTY in the saloon was great (and the letter he sent was pretty charming), wants to accompany Ceroba in the Steamworks, is open about how he feels (immediately openly confronts Ceroba and calls her out; he's assertive), not afraid to get physical if it means protecting Clover & Martlet, can be pretty loud (like when he spotted Clover after sparing him in neutral, he was like "DEPUTY!!!"

I'm left wondering if all this is the real him or not. I think it is. Just maybe toned down a bit :) It's the only explanation for the fact he's been doing all this for a really long time and never showing signs of wanting to stop/that it exhausted him

[betweenmee]

[mil-hoples]

So hard to sleep when everything is quiet but your mind is screaming so loud.

[luriuan]