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nitroracer20 said

Yes!!!

thats all ill contribute to this.

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You say that like wanting an educated public is some kind of political position. It’s not.

Education isn’t partisan. It’s foundational. It benefits everyone—economically, culturally, and practically. The only time it gets framed as political is when it’s being twisted or weaponized for someone else’s agenda.

And yeah, there are people who resent it. Sometimes that comes from bad experiences, sometimes from limited access, sometimes from being told it wasn’t for them. Sometimes by people that lack discipline to get an education. But that doesn’t make education the problem.

Don’t let politicians, or anyone else, turn something this basic into a wedge issue. An educated population helps all of us. That is not political. That is a fact proven by human history.

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Lassen Forge said

What’s happened to Humanity?? We used to be polite and cordial to each other, but the more I see on line, the more I realize we’ve lost *something*…. Maybe it’s the lack of decorum from some i power, but I think it’s more the ability to hide behind a keyboard.

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Humanity didn’t lose anything. It just took the muzzle off.

Back in the day, being “polite” had less to do with virtue and more to do with proximity. You had to look a man in the eye when you said something stupid, and there was always the very real possibility he’d rearrange your teeth for it. So people learned restraint. Not kindness, restraint.

Now we’ve built this vast electronic saloon where everyone gets a microphone and nobody gets punched. No eye contact. No consequences. Just pure, unfiltered impulse blasted into the void at the speed of light. Turns out a lot of what was hiding under that old-world “civility” wasn’t grace, it was fear and social pressure doing their job.

Throw in a steady diet of outrage-as-entertainment from the people in power, and you’ve got a perfect storm. Everyone’s yelling, nobody’s listening, and the loudest lunatics get the most attention.

So no, we didn’t lose decorum. We just removed the guardrails and found out how many people were swerving the whole time.

Also, people are followers… Followers only follow.

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Lassen Forge said

Will we ever recover? I only hope so!!!

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You don’t put that genie back in the bottle. The curtain’s been yanked open and everyone’s seen the wiring, the bad paint, the whole crooked set… There’s no going back to polite illusion after that. Not cleanly, anyway.

But that doesn’t mean it’s over. It just means the next version has to be built with eyes open. Fewer illusions, more accountability. People choosing restraint instead of being forced into it by proximity and the threat of getting clocked. Harder road, no doubt. Less romantic. More honest.

Will we get there? Maybe. Humanity has a strange habit of lurching forward after making an absolute mess of things. But it won’t be because we suddenly became better people. It’ll be because enough of us got tired of the noise and decided, one at a time, to stop adding to it.

In my estimation, nothing changes without a focus on education. The general public, especially those with blow horns, has proven itself to be incredibly uneducated.

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09Q said

Genuine and sincere question; how do you definite using your words "prehistoric opinions"? Without the context of the posts I didn’t see what was posted.

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The guy posting that nonsense knows exactly what I consider prehistoric… he learned that lesson before he got shown the door.

It’s really not complicated. Be decent to people and you won’t have to learn it the hard way. Being kind isn’t some rare skill, it’s the baseline.

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bwringer said

I first knew of Laura because she’s sort of in Simone Giertz’ orbit.

Their collaborations are great because of the contrasts; Simone is more emotional (especially when she’s getting fed up with something; I can relate) and can be really funny and entertaining (and then something amazing pops out; she’s far more skilled than she lets on), and Laura sort of calmly gets things done and figures out the engineering. Both are outstanding visionaries and talented crafters.

What’s interesting is how quite a few of these YouTube "makers" (I still find the word "maker" a little cringe, but maybe that’s just me) are doing things very differently than the standard "reality show" formula by highlighting collaboration and cooperation. The best of them are very clear that they don’t know everything, they screw up regularly, they have to learn by doing, and that they lean on others for skills they don’t have. Much of the best content online is the collaborations. (Maker Secret Santa is great as well.)

Jimmy DiResta is another I respect greatly; he is constantly learning and experimenting, and pushing his comfort zone on every project.

He actually had a short-lived reality show on Netflix called "Making Fun", where kids would suggest various weird projects and Jimmy and a small selection of quirky crafters would bring them to life. It was a great concept, but inevitably the idiots directing it focused way too much on the oddball aspects of the characters and manufactured conflict. They turned Jimmy into a growling grump instead of a calm and humble but masterful craftsman. They just had no clue that collaboration could be so much more interesting and meaningful and completely missed the point.

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I know Jimmy a bit. Really good guy. Watching him and Laura, you start to see the same wiring, both of them operating with this wide-open skill set and zero fear. They don’t sit around waiting to be qualified. They just go.

The difference is in the arsenal. Jimmy’s shop is like a fully loaded war room. If there’s a specialized tool for a job, he’s probably got it within arm’s reach. Laura, on the other hand, works a little looser. She’s got an impressive setup, no doubt, but she leans more on adaptability than specialization. She’ll figure out a way with what she has instead of waiting for the “right” tool.

If you are a bigot, if you are the kind of small, shriveled soul who gets his kicks judging how other people choose to live their one and only life on this godforsaken spinning rock, then get out. Find yourself another watering hole. Pack your prehistoric opinions into a bag and haul them somewhere else, because this forum has no use for them and neither do I. My patience for that particular breed of stupidity ran out a long time ago… and I’m done.

To everybody else, the decent ones, the people who showed up here in good faith to actually engage with other human beings like civilized adults, I apologize for the interruption.

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harley jim said

I watch Laura on the builders channel, its a production of this old house. She built what I would call a gypsy wagon to live in, in Germany. She has an imagination when it comes to solving problems, I hope she dose well here.

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She’s doing really, really well. Pulling something like 100k views a video and, from the outside, it looks like she’s running lean. No bloated crew, no nonsense, just tools, materials, and intent.

I’m most impressed by her versatility. If she doesn’t know how to do something, she just jumps in and figures it out. To me, that’s what talent looks like.

In any case, if you don’t have anything nice to say, go **** yourself. ]]> https://www.garagejournal.com/laura-kampf/#comment-39425 Tue, 17 Mar 2026 21:26:43 +0000 https://www.garagejournal.com/?p=5221#comment-39425

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67carl said

I remember Ed left because, as he said, they wanted to have less mechanical detail. I remember the first episode where Ed’s replacement spent a significant amount of the show breaking down and rebuilding a turbocharger in detail. I thought it was fascinating. It didn’t mesh with what Ed said, but I can’t be sure it didn’t decline after that. It was long ago.

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I don’t know either of them personally. All I’ve ever had to go on are the reputations, and even repeating those starts to feel like rumor-peddling… so I’ll leave it alone.

I will say this, though — it got ugly on YouTube for a stretch. Real ugly. This was probably a decade ago now, but it wasn’t subtle and it wasn’t quiet.