It's a pity that diesel-gate happened, and that they weren't able to solve the emissions problem.
I came across a post about a diesel tractor with no electrical parts and imagined the value of a post-apocalyptical car that could withstand EMPs and run on virtually any fuel type. Limited market obviously, make it configurable like a diesel Slate truck and baby you've got a stew going!
Yes, and well done as well. Unlike the other two unmentionables, Linus very much worthy of remembrance. Sure he was extra grumpy for a long time but that's about the only bad thing you can say about the man.
Grief and depression are distinctly different things.
There's obviously been many missteps on the road to "curing" depression but I think we're moving forward and it's nice to have options.
I went on anti-depressants after my brother died and they helped a lot, and I was able to stop them when no longer needed. In my decades of having medical care, I've never had a doctor push any medications on to me other than strongly recommend in certain conditions (statins, as the accumulated evidence indicates it's worth a go).
Ketamine has been very helpful as well but that is unfortunately unnecessarily spendy. I've don't plenty of recreational chemical adventures and I fail to see the appeal of it in that regard.
Adams' political views were highly distasteful to me, but I think it's important to recognize all facets of a person. One can appreciate one aspect and hate the other. It's ok to have mixed feelings.
The trade balance as a number shouldn't matter, but offshoring critical manufacturing capability and production ecosystems does.
China has at least 2 key advantages in manufacturing -- cheaper labor and laxer regulations. If the US were to embrace and extend robotics and automation more vigorously that first point could become moot. Also the second point as far as labor regulations go, and if environmental regulations were properly priced then that too would be moot.
1. The US industrial output has been growing for decades[1]. US manufacturing is doing very well, it's US manufacturing jobs that aren't due to automation.
2. Manufacturing as % of the population has long been declining globally including China. Labor cost is a very minor expense in modern manufacturing unless we talking something like clothing. I don't think Americans miss the millions of jobs they had 60 years ago sewing shoes.
3. Car industry isn't critical manufacturing capability by any means. I can understand ships, or steel or even chips, but cars?
China hasn't been cheap for ages. Mexican labor is way cheaper both in manufacturing (20% less) and engineering (40 % less).
I'll quote you the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook himself on that topic:
The number one reason why we like to be in China is the people. China has moved into very advanced manufacturing, so you find in China the intersection of craftsman kind of skill, and sophisticated robotics and the computer science world. That intersection, which is very rare to find anywhere, that kind of skill, is very important to our business because of the precision and quality level that we like. China has extraordinary skills. In the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I'm not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields. Hence, the vocational expertise in China is very deep.
FWIW a cousin of mine, Italian, founded a 3D printers startup a decade ago and according to him there was no place in the world with the level of expertise and skills to create a complex machine manufacturing startup like Guanzhou or Shenzen. It's not just the skills they have when it comes to manufacturing, it's the entire ecosystem: logistics, bureaucracy, suppliers, energy, materials, engineering. China has all of those.
He was even featured on the first Italian national channel:
But the ecosystem (like all ecosystems) evolves as all the entities within it evolve. Originally it was cheap labor. I think the key difference is that each entity in the US is independent and self-focused on quarterly earnings (as the C-Suite is rewarded by that and they call the shots), whereas China thinks holistically as far as how the nation moves ahead as a whole.
tl;dr our priorities have been reversed -- profit vs people vs vice versa.
The promise made was that they were going after "bad people", e.g., murderers, rapists, etc. I don't think many people have a problem with that.
But that's not who they're going after, it's everybody, with a focus on ethnic cleansing. It is no longer hyperbole to compare what's happening now to Germany in the 1930's.
Agreed. They've made it quite clear that they intend to label any dissent or protest as terrorism and use force to suppress it. I don't see how the situation will improve. Perhaps if the 3.5% rule holds true https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3.5%25_rule
I came across a post about a diesel tractor with no electrical parts and imagined the value of a post-apocalyptical car that could withstand EMPs and run on virtually any fuel type. Limited market obviously, make it configurable like a diesel Slate truck and baby you've got a stew going!
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