Splendid Isolation

OBSMBH

September 5, 2026 Kim du Toit Drive Time

…or, “O be still, my beating heart”.

As Longtime Readers know full well, I have always been a YUGE fan of Alfa Romeo cars despite never having owned one. Pound for pound, I think that Alfa Romeo have made some of the world’s most beautiful cars over their long and storied history. Here are just a few, to illustrate my point:

1935 Tipo 8C 2900B

1936 8C 2300 Le Mans Tourer

1938 8C 2900B Mile Miglia

1954 1900 C Super Sport Touring

1959 Giulietta Spider Veloce

1965 Giulia Super Sport 1965

1966 2600 Spider

1966 Giulia Super

(quite possibly my favorite “small family saloon car” of all time)

1967 33 Stradale

1967 Spider Duetto

1970 Junior Zagato

1970 GTV Veloce

…and I think you get my drift.

Now, as any fule kno, Alfa Romeo have also been, in the memorable words of James May, “purveyors of disappointment for decades”, in that they are and always have been hopelessly unreliable. That sweet howl of the 1600cc engine and silky gear change are inevitably followed by a clutch failing after only 2,000 miles, or a rearview mirror falling off on the way home from the showroom, or any number of other ailments which manufacturers like Honda managed to address long ago.

This has not deterred the “Alfisti”, that devoted band of ~~fools~~ followers of the brand who despite all hurdles, have an abiding love of anything Alfa Romeo.

For an Alfisto wannabe like me, therefore, the abiding thought is: if only Alfa could do actual engineering production of their cars (instead of just matchless design and styling), would they not be a brand to be reckoned with in the car market?

Well, someone has set out to do just that, only in the Alfa aftermarket. Take a few minutes to see how Alfaholics manage to do it.

You can just also watch the Throttle House nerds drive one (as well as a Porsche 911K [sic] ).

My final thought: if I won a really big lottery, I’d get these maniacs to work their magic on a 1971 Montreal.

The thought of that glorious 2.6-liter engine getting up to 11,000rpm…

Now maybe you’ll understand the OBSMBH title.

Earworm Compilation

September 4, 2026 Kim du Toit Music

Here ya go: a series of earworms, courtesy of Reader Sean F.

Except for 8 Miles High. Didn’t like that stoned hippie shit back then, still think it sucks.

A Second Industrial Revolution?

September 4, 2026 Kim du Toit Economics, Good News, Manufacturing

Perhaps, just possibly, we may be starting to turn a corner. From this:

Where did all that creativity come from? Largely from physical suburbs, neighborhoods of the middle and working classes, and nuclear families – all seen as contemptible by globalist/Marxists – where the father had a good job. Who have almost all been reduced to desperation. Why? Because globalism effectively shipped tens of millions of jobs overseas, and the environmental movement, backed by globalists, cleared tens of millions rural dwellers into the mega-cities, where they languish in matchbox apartments beside super highways. A manufacturing job has a multiplier of five and a resource job a multiplier of 7. Where, I ask you, do people think money comes from? Production? The Fed? To globalists the Central Banks print money to pay their mounting liabilities, thank you very much.

To this:

Now both Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, who put all their eggs into globalism, are sneering, but this is what is happening in the real world, the physical world, where actual people make actual things.

And what follows is a long list of developments that should make one feel a little more hopeful, in that they are reversing the effects of “off-shoring” our manufacturing capacity and the shuttering of energy development. Then:

None of these depend on green energy. Why? Because green energy is a boutique operation for rich globalist virtue signalers meant to steal subsidy from the taxpayer.

The investments from the private sector into the physical economy are equally huge, as the big houses diversify away from globalism and carbon capture and alternative energy as profit. Trillions are moving into the marketplace.

Oh, and Trump just CRUSHED the trade deficit, slashing it from $136B to $29.4B, the lowest in 20 years. America has been subsidizing the rest of the world long enough. Time all those broken countries stood on their own two feet.

Time to grow.

I think we can do it. The rest of the world? I’m not so sure.

The Doomed Five To Make You Think Again

September 4, 2026 Kim du Toit Disaster

What do you do when society — and specifically, a society’s infrastructure — either fails because of a Random Bad Event or else because of a series of cascading calamities brought on by years of neglect.

Here’s a piece which highlights the five places in the U.S. that you absolutely don’t want to be living in when the above S hits the F.

As much as I sometimes complain about living in north Texas, we seem to be in slightly better shape than any of the above areas, although the prospect of a catastrophic power grid failure in June with no hope of repair for months does certainly give one pause. (We’re little different from Phoenix in that regard; we have little access to water and life without air conditioning doesn’t seem survivable.)

At least we Texans have one thing going for us: the chance of becoming prey to people who would take what little we have from us during calamitous times is somewhat reduced by the fact that we are not a disarmed populace — unlike, say, the Atlantic Northeast and Chicago, which are.

I know that we laugh at Europeans when they suffer from a major heat event like this previous summer; but their summers are really, really short compared to our Western states, so at least they may be able to survive a couple of months, more or less, always with the chance of seasonal rain to help. A typical eight-month-long dry Texas- or Arizona summer? Not so much.

Sobering stuff, indeed.