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manish vij

Criss-crossover

Test-driving EV crossovers.

Overall niceness

  1. VW ID4
  2. Nissan Ariya
  3. Hyundai Ioniq 5

—
Toyota BZ4X

Cushy driver seat

All top 3 are comfy.

  1. Ariya
  2. Ioniq5
  3. ID4

—

BZ4X cramped

Ride on rough road

  1. Ariya: mid-smooth
    –
  2. Ioniq 5 : meh
  3. ID4: meh

Value

  1. Ioniq 5: base trim has all tech you need. Great deals.
  2. Ariya: base trim has power driver seat, leatherette, HUD. “Zero G” driver seat is very comfy. Great deals.
  3. ID4: higher-priced, no deals

—
BZ4X: expensive, cramped, no deals

Ariya

+

• Comfy
• Spacious
• Great value

–
• Specs are mid

• Cheesy, flat, fake-wood capacitive buttons have poorly implemented haptic click, delayed like half a sec after you tap

• Acceleration decent, but felt artificially delayed so it’s like gas

Toyota BZ4X

+
• Small steering wheel easy to drive
• Binnacle screen right in front

–
• Poor specs (charge speed, range, efficiency)
• Weird black quarter panel
• Cockpit design with closed center console is cramped
• Expensive
• Sales so surly and ignorant, seemed designed to steer away from EVs

The Last Firebender

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire: Aykroyd explains djinns to Kumail Nanjiani 🤦🏽‍♂️ :D

Kumail plays “Nadeem Razmadi,” a slacker who eventually dresses up as a Mughal warrior. “I’m Nadeem. I’m a Firemaster, turns out, like my dadi before me”

Kumail enters secret room behind spice cabinet: “This is my dadi’s place”

Black girl: “Whoah. Nice sex dungeon, ok dadi ma”

Slacker Kumail: Who’s the brave one, the [brother] who goes to engineer school, or the one who forges ahead with no education or future prospects?

Patton Oswalt: “This is pre-Sumerian, this is pre-Sanskrit”

Black girl sees Mughal miniature painting: “Nipple stuff, iconic”

Kumail: “Oh yeah, that was my dadi’s favorite painting”

Frozen Empire, more like Bhangra Empire :)

Bill Murray questions Kumail with a colander:

With Arab-ish veil:

The Last Firebender:

Punjabi ‘Wish’

Paint-by-number rom-com Irish Wish puts Brigid, mother saint of Ireland, in a Punjabi salwar kameez, with trim vaguely like an unwound Celtic knot. Punjabi Ichha (Wish)? :) (via Ravi Swami)

The Bollywood refs are quite explicit. Here she is in a khet / farmer’s field, the headscarf a shorter dupatta…

Ducking behind a tree mischievously, missing only the love interest and rain machine

In multiple salwars.

Desi Brigid, goddess of protection and healing, evokes to me the martyrdom of Savita Halapannavar, whose tragic death enabled abortion rights for all Irish women.

Pagan goddess Brigid of the Tuatha Dé Dannan was imported into Xtianity. Hard reconciling this Brigid with the fiery, armor-forging goddess of war in the Iron Druid series.

It’s an ABCI love story: diasporic Irishwoman goes back to the desh, falls in love. This setup is very Bollywood, sort of like “#DDLJ.”

Ayesha Curry as sidekick

Brown extra

Trailer

Love the spice, hate the spicers

Dune 2 strip-mines Arab culture more than spice while casting no Arab leads. Souheila Yacoub gets a sidekick role and (spoiler) is summarily dispatched.

Full of Arab customs / names / vocab, Muslim clothes, Egyptian architecture. Florence Pugh in a taqiyah, kurta, zari work. Ferguson in Arab jewelry. Witches in burqas. “Fedaykin” = fedayeen. Islamic carved stone screens.

Padishah Walken = badshah (emperor). (pic not from Dune)

Very weird that the top US sci-fi flick is about a skinny, pale French kid cosplaying the Sunni-Shia split and emergence of the Mahdi.

Not once did I buy Chalamet as a leader, let alone a messiah. Waterboy maybe. Chocolatier, sure. Bardem’s Mahdi? Nah.

Fanatic hype man Bardem had the faithful’s hand gestures down, lol. Such a better actor than Timo Thee Callow Fae.

Fun movie, inventive visuals on the Harkonnen’s planet (b&w, triangular arena, triangle-hatted picadors, grease-bubble fireworks).

But when they get around to desi epics they’ll absolutely cast the palest actors available and relegate desis to background villains and sidekicks.

They love the spice, hate the spicers: Hollywood repeats the history of colonizers.

Crossing over

Am test-driving crossovers for parents. Stunning how far back most legacy automakers are, just not competitive on EV price/performance.

VW ID4 Plus top trim had choppy zoom, scroll and control animations. Slow charging. 275 mi. Voice control didn’t recognize “play radio.” Rough ride and creaks on a rough road. Less cushy driver seat than Ioniq. No true one-pedal or frunk. Significantly more expensive than Ioniq 5 lease.

On plus side, white plastic screens and controls, and capacitive buttons, feel more refined IRL than the toy-like look in photos. 3D model of the car you can rotate and control. Neat throbber stripe at base of inner windshield for voice control and presumably charge status. Swipe capacitive strip to retract glass roof shade. Perforated massage seats. Quiet ride.

Ioniq 5 was ~strictly better, almost no tradeoffs. 12 min 20 → 80% charge. 303 mi. Responsive screens. Cushier driver’s seat. Looks big but not when driving, just a larger Bolt / tall hatch. True one-pedal.

Physical buttons for frequent functions. V2L putting out 1.9 kW for camping / tailgating / power outages on SEL mid trim. Quiet. Cheapest lease deals of any EV if you use a broker.

UI a little geeky / Android. Very Korean: good electronics, specs monster, decent software with unrefined UI.