silverquiet

I think the crossover is pretty much the modern station wagon. I suppose they get marketed as SUV's but they're basically just a bit longer and taller car vs what I'd consider a "real" SUV; an enclosed truck chassis.

I have a friend who drives a Chevy Volt with a dead ICE engine; she just charges the battery and uses it as a (rather short range) pure EV vehicle. Not ideal, but it works for her until she gets something else.

My girlfriend has the same car and I had about the same feeling in it - it's just a cheap Nissan that happens to be electric (and I mean that in a good way). As you said, quite good as a city car, and we even did a short road trip in it, but the lack of chargers for it does produce some range anxiety.

Perhaps elections have consequences.

> who’s putting money in their hands

If we're talking about foreign oligarchs living in London, I suspect a fair amount of the money is coming from Russian organized crime.

> The UK needs to radically reduce its social safety net and simultaneously cut taxes, at least for new companies and small businesses. The only way out is real, sustained, long term growth and innovation. Stealing ever more of a shrinking pie is already running out of steam.

I was under the impression they had done that already.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_government_aust...

Though one can't help but think it wont be radical enough for conservatives until we simply dispose of those unable to work through some dystopic mechanism or other.

I was going to post this - I just joined this week, but have a friend who has sourced audiobooks from it that I couldn't find any other way so it looks good so far. Their emphasis on friendliness is nice too and seems genuine.

I would say that it's called capitalism and not laborism for a reason.

Given how much Amazon's prices change on a minute-to-minute basis, I'd assumed there was some personal discrimination component in their algorithm already (and I assume that timing/logistics is also a big part of the price changes).

Certainly my observations are pure anecdote, and only really a handful of people; all of whom started smoking before vaping was available. That said, a cigarette is a pretty impressive way of delivering nicotine, which is why they are so addictive. It's not hard to imagine that someone who's become addicted to nicotine via vape would then try other delivery methods and find them more satisfying.

That said, I do think that vapes as a replacement for an existing tobacco habit is a nice idea and it makes sense that it would be much safer. The issue is just that I have not known people to stick with them.

Every single person I've known who switched from tobacco to e-cigarettes has switched back to tobacco. They all say it's better for one reason or another.

Not regularly, but there have been contests to see how long people will stay on a rollercoaster. Speaking from some experience, after you've gone around a few times, it can actually get rather boring.

OP said "using a classic car chassis". I'm not particularly knowledgeable, but you can make a lot of modifications to an existing car, but building your own from the ground up would be mostly illegal. I think in some sense, the actual "car" is legally only the VIN plate or something like that. My state stop even doing safety inspections recently, and before that they were already pretty minimal; it was mostly a check that your lights and horn worked and that you had at least one mirror.

Dumping would be the economic term for flooding a market with underpriced goods in order to drive out domestic competitors. I don't know if that's what they're doing, but it does seem plausible, though it's hard to imagine that Tesla's prices would be competitive either way.

One issue I see with that theory is that America has been a bit of a holdout on fertility - I believe it has been fairly high amongst developed nations, though it has been in decline along with nearly every other country. I've read that fertility and religiosity are fairly well correlated, and the US has also historically been a bit of an outlier there, though religion is also in decline. I think that would be squarely in the realm of culture.

I doubt that anyone can really say what the cause is at a societal and ultimately global level; I can only really know my own reasons.

I appreciate the response. I feel like half the points in your third paragraph could easily be framed as economic factors rather than cultural (though I don't think those are as separate as people often seem to think).

What is most interesting to me is that you said cultures (plural) when saying that we have deeper problems. But according to the article, this has become a nearly universal issue across all cultures of the world; and what force but economic globalization could cause something like that?

I neither have children nor travel often, but I believe that an annual Caribbean vacation is significantly cheaper than a child. I don't doubt that children can be as you say; that they provide a motivation and sense of purpose for their parents. But clearly that is not the case for all as the number of un-involved parents would suggest.

For myself, I think economic anxiety/precarity has been one of the strongest motivators for never wanting children. As I've faced layoffs, I've often thought to myself, "at least I don't have any kids depending on me" and worried for my coworkers who did. It doesn't help that I face some medical issues either.

But I think more than anything, I just don't want to force some poor child into this world/economic system that we have created that I've never really felt comfortable in. I used to think that this made me some kind of strange outlier, but more and more, given that we see ever decreasing fertility, perhaps I was merely early to this feeling.

I agree that the tone is a bit much in places, but he does address this:

> I have learned to accept who I am — that I am not like most people — and people conflate my passion and vigor with anger or hate, when what they’re experiencing is somebody different who deeply resents what the powerful have done to the computer.

I actually tend to agree with this sentiment, but the fate of the Tiktok ban should probably be instructive here. America (at least the current government) is not really interested in world or technological leadership anymore.

That actually makes one wonder if it will move enough within the lifetime of JWST to actually detect that orbital motion.

Probably so - I've long lost the thread of what most of this is about. For instance, the state recently passed a law requiring that the ten commandments be posted in every classroom. And I had to stop and think - how many of these legislators themselves feel like they should be bound by said commandments? I'd suspect hardly any, based on their behavior.

I would say worse than that, we are doing the opposite of large-scale terraforming to create a planet that will be rather inhospitable towards the end of this century and even less so in the centuries that follow. I think the sci-fi delusion is a hold over from a better time; the heyday was probably the 50's-60's when scientific progress seems like it was much greater and was actually able to translate into benefits for people that were noticeable.

> I remember someone pointing out that a generation ship could be problematic because you have one generation who decides to launch this expedition but will never see the end, multiple generations who didn't choose this life and won't get to see the benefits, and then one generation who actually gets to the planet but might not even want to be there.

That isn't really different from the way things are now. We are, in fact, traveling through the galaxy for many generations and none of us signed up for it. We just happen to be on a largeish ship and have no destination.

There's a lot here I feel I can respond to, and I can't help but agree with the sentiment; I've been saying something like that to people here for years and was dismissed. That said, I think most of the push to drive down labor standards is really coming more from the owner/capitalist class than anyone else. Obviously, they've got the most incentive to do so. What will vex me unendingly is that so many in labor vote against their material interests for reasons that are likely cultural.

> Klarna, which presented Monday’s earnings via an AI-generated avatar of its chief executive

I've suspected for awhile now that the most easily automated job would be upper management.

I've been thinking that reason must prevail for nigh on a decade and while there have been moments where it seems to, overall I can't say that I'm particularly optimistic at the moment. I have been told that "degrowth" (for the purpose of slowing climate change) is the most unpopular policy imaginable, but it seems like we are taking a stab at it for different reasons. Perhaps that unpopularity will have some effect; it does seem (both anecdotally for me and in some data that I've seen) that swing voters are already regretting their decision.

> (Obviously all of that is bullshit.)

It isn't obvious to me - that is rather plausible and a cute story.

> Not long ago, Kansas would have responded to the current situation by making the bastards pay. This would have been a political certainty, as predictable as what happens when you touch a match to a puddle of gasoline. When business screwed the farmers and the workers – when it implemented monopoly strategies invasive beyond the Populists' furthest imaginings – when it ripped off shareholders and casually tossed thousands out of work – you could be damned sure about what would follow. Not these days. Out here the gravity of discontent pulls in only one direction: to the right, to the right, further to the right. Strip today's Kansans of their job security, and they head out to become registered Republicans. Push them off their land, and next thing you know they're protesting in front of abortion clinics. Squander their life savings on manicures for the CEO, and there's a good chance they'll join the John Birch Society. But ask them about the remedies their ancestors proposed (unions, antitrust, public ownership), and you might as well be referring to the days when knighthood was in flower.

"What's the Matter with Kansas?"

I think I was born an old curmudgeon because I've essentially always felt this way. That said, Spotify got me to subscribe at least for a bit because I could not match its catalog and convenience. I also try and keep a FLAC archive of all music I might want, but some things just don't exist on other mediums these days.

And yet the Republicans have campaigned on tearing down government for my entire life. And people treated me like a fool for believing them.