You mean they know more about engines than most people and often work for the most monopolistic big orgs that exist? Who would have guessed?
I guess search engines count for something if you shovel in enough coal ;)
3,328 karma · joined May 2, 2016
I guess search engines count for something if you shovel in enough coal ;)
Probably could be a good jumping-off point for those who want to weed out the more intelligent customers, or those having wise purchasing tendencies. One of the techniques most proven to work for some products :\
Too bad they died off, those were the captains of industry in the 20th century, it was tragic to see them go.
Now it's even more tragic with huddles built from captains of non-industry, "monetizing" rather than producing.
If a consumer recovery is going to happen, what is it being produced that the bottom 10% is going to consume where they can get their money's worth if nothing in the affordable tier qualifies any more? A greater number of people across the board need to get their money's worth on almost everything like never before seen during so many peoples' lifetime at this point.
I liked it better when Trump-like character was almost universally recognized as nothing other than a mindless financial squanderer wrapped around an inherently dishonest core. This was voiced most strongly especially among the rich and powerful.
They used to know better, but that was then and these are not them.
Which has nothing to do with Amazon. Except for the way the political party which leveraged Reaganomics in the 20th century to the effect that average consumers would eventually no longer be able to afford anything other than Chinese-made products, turned out to be the same party which fell behind Trump in the 21st century as if his financial acumen was't completely non-advanced.
And just as consumer prices of the Chinese mass-produced goods continued to fall as desperately needed by consumers due to direct purchase from China, Trump halts that so there's more need to go through Amazon, they can maintain more control that way.
One of the recent efforts completed was removal of support for Ubuntu 24.04. That part I remember exactly :\
Considering that the offer seems to be familiar and not more lucrative than ordinary separation, I would estimate the target is a 20000 headcount rapid reduction by December. If that's not accomplished this time then I would expect further action until that short-term target is met as early in 2027 as possible. Probably by offering to many who were not included this time.
This is actually pretty drastic, enough to be considered overkill adequate enough to weather economic downturns extending for quite some time, it would be much more foolish to err on the side of inadequate.
After 20000 is hit, I would expect no further cutbacks for well more than a year unless things turn miserably worse faster and steeper than their top people could imagine based on what they know now.
Then some things, especially electronic memory, storage, and processing power are not only going to remain expensive, but actually skyrocket as we have seen.
I don't know if I want intelligence to get much cheaper, I might not be able to afford it as well as I can now, which is not as easy as it was :\
Everybody thrives best when luck is on their side :)
Even the pros flood a house now & then. You have to figure they have insurance just in case.
Once the dust settles (or the water drains) an interesting indicator might be whether there is any difference in insurance rates between human and robot plumbers.
Ah, what's the difference anyway any more, not sorry or happy about it but maybe the effort at being neutral instead of emotional has not been completely wasted ;)
Everyone else just goes along for the ride if they want to enjoy the same convenience, as long as they can stomach it.
How could today ever be classified as inflation when the purchasing power is declining even faster but not because people have more money to spend, mainly beause they have less.
Why for the consumers that feels nothing like inflation whatsoever. How could it? /s
>US dollar has lost 20% of value over the past 5 years.
Sounds like an accurate statistic. Relative to a consistent benchmark that means most to Wall Street and the professional economists who serve them. That's who has and controls most of the money and who the government responds to. Their outlook definitely depends on these statistics being consistent with how it has been in the past when things were quite rosy. There needs to be an obvious path (for them) to once again return to optimistic outlooks similar to how it has worked during previous downturns. As intended.
Too bad.
For the general public an even more accurate measure of damage to the dollar could be the Big Mac index, but I'll go you one up because I just stopped in to McDonald's (the same location) for the first time in 5 years and got an even more representative identical $1 ice cream cone and it is now $2.39. That's without tax. This might have happened even quicker than 5 years for all I know.
This is a product that was engineered to cost exactly a dollar over the long run, and a long run it has been. But no more, now it is engineered the same way and the cost still reflects the very minimum they can get by selling it for, just as always. That's why it's only $2.39 by now and my estimate is it will go up further before there is a chance of coming down, if ever.
That's a greater than 50% drop in purchasing power for the general public already. McDonald's has a better internal gauge on that than New York banks, how would a bank know as deeply if they are merely major shareholders in McDonald's and nothing like the general public anyway? This is the type of thing corporations try to obscure in their financial reporting which makes it even worse. McDonald's is huge and a more accurate barometer of what the general pubic experiences than most economists.
Walmart's "engineered" pricepoint products for low-income consumers are not reflecting this full effect yet, closer to a 30% drop, but they are way bigger and better able to weather the storm, plus don't have the more realistic inclusion of the pain that the franchisees are seeing in addition to the corporation. Which seems to put McDonald's more in line with the general public at this point. I expect that Walmart has had professional economists on staff for their own internal purposes for a while now, who also have more accurate data plus more current than Wall Street has about the general public at any one time. But due to the professional "nature" that they share with their counterparts at the banks and within government, that could be why they sometimes have "rollbacks" and price increases in rapid succession when it's obvious each effort was intended to carry forward to the percentage extent deployed but last much longer, with no further changes foreseen otherwise it would not be reversed so quickly. This coincides with major reshuffling of SKUs like never before since their "superstores" got started, with some tendency appearing like catering a bit to "whales" themselves. Maybe a hedge in case the lower-income customers' spending continues to decline to the point of not being able to support such size going forward. IOW looks like Walmart is more like Wall Street now than McDonald's.
That makes me suspicious that even with the best data, current economic thinking among professionals has already abandoned the general public whether they are trying to cater to the lower income portion of the US or not.
Anyway, looks to me like it is similar to the way it was after Nixon had his way with the dollar, once it gets bad enough for the banks to begin to experience about a 50% drop where they now have "only" 20%, there will finally be a fire under enough government peoples' ass to start taking some action that might be able to lift all boats. Regardless, there will be tens of millions left with nothing but life preservers which can do nothing but directionless bobbing compared to those who manage to stay aboard some kind of vessel. In addition to the growing tens of millions already ordained to drifting in that "non-boat" along with the ones already there.
But nothing like that will be taken too seriously until that level of pain reaches the top, and only under desperation after there is no longer a viable way back in any familiar fashion for them.
>What has changed the opportunities in the job market?
Good questions, I don't have many answers since I'm only one of the above, certainly not an Ivy League PhD :)
So I'll respond with a short response to your prompt, using only the natural intelligence this senior citizen has remaining .
>graduated summa cum laude from Rice University and enrolled at Princeton for his Ph.D. in 2018. His research on ice formation was cited by the Nobel committee when it awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2024.
>he aimed to work in science roles at pharmaceutical companies.
This shows a certain kind of kind of ambition and brilliant capabilities. I would think if he had stayed in Houston in 2018 and went straight to work at an oil company or chemical company he would done a lot better by now. Then with a company helping pay for the advanced degree, they will already be more invested in your progress after that.
I almost took this route myself when I was right out of school, my first employer was fairly ideal as a research company that had some money-making chemicals (including a pharmaceutical I didn't know about until I got the job), however it was the only chemical place at all in the college town, founded by one of my professors 20 years earlier. That's just about the opposite of how it is in a truly industrial location.
>The response to numerous applications was mostly silence, with a few rejections.
For me it was from applying at non-chemical outfits so I could potentially survive the Nixon recession and remain in the college town to regroup and see about further degree pursuit.
I'm not up-to-date but I would think that staying in Salt Lake would also limit the job possibilities for pharmaceuticals compared to places like New Jersey. All things being equal a local candidate can often be preferred precisely because the screening process takes so long, by the time they get close to selecting the winner, the need to get to work immediately rules out any further delays. Job goes to the one that can start the next Monday without involving any personal "logistics", and who can put the nose to the grindstone uninterrupted immediately without distractions, making up for time lost when the position was unfilled.
>Weis studied chemical principles and molecular interactions,
I did that, it was a very worthwhile stepping stone, no doubt about it, I also accepted a destiny to thrive or not based on my own technology. I'm a chemist, not an engineer though.
When an opening came up at my local target chemical employer, the competition was so overwhelming in number I didn't stand a chance. This felt about the same point in the recession as it is now. I began to realize I needed to start looking in another state, so that was going to be after my fiancee graduated if we could survive that long.
No such thing as on-line screening yet, and phone screening had become out-of-the-question, with hundreds of applicants, employers never had any more time for that, especially for jobs where the application form is what you need, not so much a resume. Fax machines were not even out yet.
So you applied in person and it was personal screening from that point forward. During normal times an open position would draw a few applicants a week, and it could always take a long time for a candidate to get hired whether the employer was seeking some uncommon previous experience or not.
The problem was, there were now hundreds of applicants per day for jobs of any kind, and it was getting worse.
The real break came when I was applying for miscellaneous local jobs (hope was still declining across the country), one time at a lumber company. I didn't think my chances were too good after I talked to some of the other applicants, a number who had at least a few years somewhat related experience when I had not much.
But I was already wearing a tie so I stopped by the old chemical plant when there wasn't an opening and the Personnel lady[0] liked me and pulled my original application to review. I toured the plant and labs with the actual hiring PhD, and within a week they made me a part-time job 4 days a week Tue-Fri. I tried my hardest to kick butt in a visible way and within 6 months some of the other workers started to say "to themselves", "why doesn't he have to work on Monday?". So that's how I got the first full-time job in my field :)
Things were still not ideal concerning pay and (chemical) toxicity, and after I became a more experienced candidate I went for "greener" pastures, some of which were uniquely toxic in their own ways :\
There was a real big difference once I got to an actual major industrial environment. There are more diverse opportunities, but more normal in the sense that the majors have money-making chemicals first & foremost usually based on natural resources more so than technology, then their research is also massive in scale afterward, when they simply need it more and can afford it better. Realistically, though the number of opportunities are far more abundant, I would still say the biggies fund far less experimentation than the amount they could actually afford. Which turned out to be where I found my niche and eventually started my own research company, with somewhat deeper theoretical background for the most part after more than a decade of more intense experimentation, and leaning much more on ambition to make up for the lack of advanced degree. By now it's been a few more decades of further advances.
>Weis got a gig training AI on his expertise, including in engineering and fluid mechanics.
I know a little but sure don't think I could pull my weight doing that compared to a decent engineer. However I still feel confident I could turn him into a money-making lab worker right quick, no engineering required. Just like I did the last time the employer I had hired a ChemE PhD for me to train.
For this person in particular having circuit boards on the bench without being under an employer's direction, that is one thing most ChemE's don't do. I think a good one-word piece of advice might be "electrochemistry", and would consider focusing on networking with as many of those in every level and position in the battery technology landscape. I would play the odds that there's more employers who don't have "any" open positions (compared to those that do where odds are in your favor) and focus on the former (after already experiencing so much of the latter) so that when something does come up you might have a better chance.
[0] The "HR" designation for the established Personnel Office at corporations was still in the coining process. With the unprecedented amount of meat they now had to draw from, it could then be recognized as more of a "resource" to be exploited, and huge compared to the personnel they still had working after the widespread cutbacks. A great deal of rebalancing took place between the effect these external untapped resources have versus the internal human resources, especially with regard to pay & benefits. Once it got underway it did kind of snowball in a lot of areas. For instance you could start a salt mine based on a natural resource, but eventually once you had thousands of employees and for some reason growth has stalled, quarterly figures can still be goosed toward increase by extracting more from human resources along with the same old salt. It's all just salt of the Earth to some people when you think about it ;)
And cops do sometimes want a higher performance police cruiser than average in case a runaway speeder needs to be apprehended.
Probably going to eventually need an autonomous one of these for some police departments:
https://gmauthority.com/blog/2026/09/california-highway-patr...
No driver needed but you still need to have a Robocop inside to get out and write the citation :)
In the old days this kind of thing was often referred to as a "police interceptor".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW8-1SYvDTI
If the violation is serious enough the autonomous predatory tow trucks will hear it on the radio then show up promptly to whisk the vehicle away, as usual. Plus in this case the driver is detained and the vehicle is impounded in the same stroke :)
After that it would only be fair that they would have to not only pay bail to the court, but also towing & storage fees before being released, like for any normal driver.
And if they skip bail, they're going back in the slammer :0
But the company itself should be given a citation for the majority of ordinary traffic violations, and should be the one fined.
Also the further back you go into the 19th century, the more likely it is that the potentiating invention would be completely unrelated to nuclear chemistry.
Regardless, that same potentiating invention (whatever it is) is surely responsible by now for a whole lot more things other than nuclear science.
Not very close to that yet really, it has nothing more to do with Medical School than the College of Law does.
If I'm not mistaken, every dental school might not have been on board as long as others, but it was well into the 20th century that dental associations did not yet accept the "theory" that germs can be a cause of tooth problems.
OTOH once in the hands of some private equity funds, they can pretty much do that to one of their properties whenever they feel like it, or even decide to take the whole PE group public if they get a wild hair.
All it takes is a little paperwork for them (the kind they are much more self-interested in compared to most decent medical professionals) perhaps including some bank notes.