this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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The Far Side
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Hello fellow Far Side fans!
About this community and how I post the comic strip… Many moons ago, I would ask my Dad to save the newspaper for me everyday so I could read my favorite comic strips and one of those was The Far Side. These days of course you find just about anything online including www.thefarside.com where they post several comics a day and I repost them here. Just to note, the date you see in my posts is not the initial release date, but the date they were posted on the website.
The Far Side is a single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Chronicle Features and then Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from December 31, 1979, to January 1, 1995 (when Larson retired as a cartoonist). Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world, logical fallacies, impending bizarre disasters, (often twisted) references to proverbs, or the search for meaning in life… Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Far_Side
Hope you enjoy and feel free to contribute to the community with art, cool stuff about the author, tattoos, toys and anything else, as long it’s The Far Side!
Ps. Sub to all my comic strip communities:
Bloom County [email protected] https://lemm.ee/c/bloomcounty
Calvin and Hobbes [email protected] https://lemmy.world/c/calvinandhobbes
Cyanide and Happiness !cyanideandhappiness https://lemm.ee/c/cyanideandhappiness
Garfield [email protected] https://lemmy.world/c/garfield
The Far Side [email protected] https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]
Fine print: All comics I post are freely available online. In no way am I claiming ownership, copyright or anything else. This is a not for profit community, we just want to enjoy our comics, thank you.
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That's not a small truck, it's a large truck with a small bed. This is a small truck. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_truck
No, that's a kei truck which are utility vehicles designed for a very specific application that America does not have
Aka a small truck. Unlike oversized American pickup trucks which are designed for no application other that to make their owner's dick feel bigger as they drive to the grocery store.
Show me a single kei truck that can haul a full crew, 3,000lbs, and go 70mph on the highway without frying its transmission.
You do know they have full size pickup trucks in Japan, right? Kei trucks are pretty much only used for extremely light duty in the cities and within jobsites (as in, between two warehouses on the same site) because they're so small and underpowered. They're cool, but completely impractical in America
Again, it's a small truck, with the advantages and limitations that come with that.
But let's ignore the size, since a kei style truck can be sized up or down to fit. There's a different conversation to be had here. American pickup trucks are focused on being fashion accessories for insecure suburbanites, which involves creating these theoretical numbers and making those numbers as big as possible. Is carrying 5 people and towing however many tons at 112 km/h a common use case? No, and I'm terrified that it's legal to travel that fast while towing a trailer in some places. In inflating these pointless numbers, it neglects being a practical working vehicle, because that was never the goal.
A simple flatbed like the kei truck is so much more practical. It's low to the ground so it's easy to chuck things in and out of, the bed is easily replaceable when it gets damaged, the bed is much bigger for the size of the vehicle.
There are plenty of small trucks running around in the US. A 2023 Ford Maverick is just 1" longer than a 90s Nissan Hardbody and much safer with better fuel economy.
You don't know what you're talking about. "Kei" is a strict legal term in Japan, for keijidōsha or "light duty" and are regulated in size (no longer than 3.4m / 134in) and displacement. What you're describing is a cab-over design, which we have plenty of in the US but are known for being fuel inefficient and unsafe.
Truck larpers have always been a thing. It still doesn't change the fact that when you need to haul things (like millions of people do every single day), a truck is the only vehicle platform that can do it.
I do it 5 days a week. You've also just given out the fact that you don't live in the US, so I'm not even sure why you entered into this conversation about the American car market.
At that point you want a Mitsubishi Fuso or something, they're up to the task of doing real work while a US style pickup truck is for posing.
Hell, even a little Ute with a flathead is more practical for actually loading up with stuff