The key is to use an alternative that’s actually good, and most of these companies were never going to make an alternative that was good, just one that was exploitative.
Most of my purchases the last few years have been gog. The only game service where you actually own the game afterwards.
There’s always recalls going on, so it’s not indicative of anything when they happen.
I’ve had 3 newer cars from 3 brands in 3 countries, and all 3 had a recall of some kind. In each case they just bring it in and fix it…
You might be surprised, on many fronts.
Empathy for others who are not exactly like you is actually considered a virtue when you’re not in the little bubble that is reddit’s toxic, hateful political disease. Despite what you seem to think, empathy for someone who isn’t exactly like you is a key requirement of a healthy marriage.
Man, I hope I live to see my grandchildren read my book, The Graysonian Ethic: Lessons for my unborn son (He’s born now, and he’s beautiful). I bet parts of it will seem archaic, since it’s directly addressing contemporary issues, but other parts will likely be timeless. It’d be really interesting if I could see them come of age and we’d get to see what they thought of their grandparents. The world will likely be a much different place by then, and not in ways you think.
Interesting thing about gasoline engines, they become more and less efficient when the temperature drops.
They become more efficient because the air being brought into the engine is denser and cooler which is better, but they become less efficient because rubber parts become stiffer, lubricant becomes harder to move, and overall everything is tougher to deal with.
One result is that if you drive long ranges in -40C, your fuel economy is relatively similar to what it would be in warmer weather. You can blast the heat and your vehicle is toasty warm since it’s just moving waste heat around. I’ve done such drives many times since resources are not where people tend to be.
As you approach -40 you’ll probably want to have your block heater plugged in overnight on a gasoline engine, but generally speaking you can get pretty cold and have the motor turn over just fine. I drove a diesel for a while in the far north and going back to a (really crappy) gas engine was surprising for how easy it was to just get up and go in really cold weather.
Ah, you’re illiterate. I guess it’s easy to think everyone else is stupid if you can’t comprehend the words they say.
EV performance in -40C is something nobody talks about but I’m extremely interested in.
There have been lots of videos of Teslas leaving a heated garage then flying around a snowy track in Norway, but that’s much different than getting in a car that’s soaked in the cold all night, driving it to work, then driving home after it sits all day. Or even better, taking that same cold soaked car and driving to the next city 13 hours away with only one or two places to stop along the way.
Most people don’t know anything about Canada, even people who live there. Most Canadians live in one of two megacities. They’ve never been to lynn lake, meadow lake, fort McMurray, fort st. John, or pickle lake. The wealth is extracted from these places, but with 0 understanding of what the country is like, particularly in February.
It’s an easy thing to just assume people are stupid. It makes the world nice and simple and if only people would stop being stupid and start being smart (smart like you, obviously!) All the problems of the world would be solved.
For a lot of people, reality isn’t so simple. The common man is already struggling. Throughout history, the age people get married and have kids has been indicative of the stress civilizations are under, and many people aren’t having kids before they get too old to have kids because that’s the level of stress the common man is under. Global civilization is facing a demographic bomb as every continent except Africa is facing a massive reduction in population in coming decades because nobody is having kids because life is so hard.
As a study in contrasts, just look at wages vs. rent while I’ve been an adult. Minimum wage went from 11/hr to 15/hr. Meanwhile, my first 2 bedroom apartment was 350/mo, and today you can’t get anything for less than 1200. A few years before I rented, there were decent houses available for $50,000 and today the average house price nationwide is $800,000. (Not the US, obviously)
So when a bunch of the business leaders and politicians who magically seem to get richer every time something is done “for our own good” – politicians who make as much as a senior engineer on paper but all of whom seem to become fabulously wealthy regardless (huh wonder where all those extra millions came from) while the common man has suffered – get together to figure out new ways to squeeze the common man, is it really so stupid to be skeptical? “Don’t worry everyone, we’re going to make your life even harder but it’s all for your own good.”
Having the summit in Dubai is fitting – a city of extreme inequality, paid for with oil money, built by slaves, ruled by kings.
You can try to guilt and shame people into not caring about basic biological drives, but you actually can’t. Entire generations of people have been pushed so far that their family lines will end with them. It’s comfortable enough – like being in a pool of comfortably warm water right up to your neck that you can’t escape from, but when you can see people plotting to add more water to your pool the next step is you drown.
In previous eras, common people being this stressed out led to the fall of the Roman empire, the French reign of terror, the end of the Romanov dynasty in Russia or the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany. While you call people stupid for not listening to their leaders, historically speaking those same leaders will be lucky to keep their heads on their shoulders.
It’s because the Liberals are about to lose badly because their policies are not sustainable.
People need home heating, transportation, food, and housing to not die. Those aren’t luxuries.
If you want, try to help such people.
It might surprise you that you can dump unlimited money into certain people and they’ll end up back in the same situation, but they’ll hate you for not giving more because you still have something left.
It’s like trying to help a drowning person, they often will drag you into the water with them.
I feel like this whole article is based on a false premise.
Go to a dealership right now, and try to find any new truck for $36,000. On paper you might be able to get the lowest base model, but in reality good luck with that.
I just checked the dealership near me, and the lowest price for a new vehicle of any kind is 39,400CAD or about 28,000USD. The lowest priced new truck is 66,500CDN, or about 49,300USD.
That’s just what the world looks like now thanks to inflation. And that’s not a vehicle using expensive battery technology, and that’s not a vehicle made out of expensive, difficult to manufacture with stainless steel, it’s just the cheapest standard truck at the dealership.
Really, it looks like the cybertruck is about bang on with prices for other EV trucks that aren’t made out of entirely stainless steel. Considering that Tesla isn’t a budget brand, that doesn’t seem unreasonable. Nobody at Tesla is psychic, they couldn’t have predicted super high inflation sparked in part due to policies enacted due to a global pandemic, so of course prices rose.
The top three causes of death are heart disease, stroke, and pulmonary disease. Heart disease can be painful but can also result in a relatively painless death by heart attack. Stroke can cause pain, but death by stroke can be quick and painless. Pulmonary disease is more likely than not really brutal if it’s fatal, with people suffering from it suffering from a feeling that they’re drowning constantly.
Don’t worry about it budday!
The chocolate industry hasn’t found a viable alternative to African slavery 160 years after the emancipation proclamation, but they’ve got this fossil fuels thing licked!
It was early when I read the article, I got the impression that the 9W was for the furnace version of the thermopile electric generator.
Oh, it’s just a thermopile put out in the sun.
I can see why it never caught on then. You’d be relying on the difference in temperature between the hot side of a thing painted black put in the sun and the cool side in the shade. The amount of energy you’d get from such a setup would be infinitecimal. I’d expect you’d need to do an absurd amount of work and use an absurd amount of material just to power a single house.
The amount of energy it would take to build a “solar cell” thermopile that’d generate 1.5v with a quite high internal resistance would probably be in the megawatt-hours, likely from coal and oil.
I deleted all my big tech accounts, and lots of people are posting on the fediverse.
You only really own a PC game you bought on gog. Everywhere else you’re just renting.
https://fortune.com/2023/06/10/fortune-500-falling-profits-telling-something-economy-recession-return-to-normal/
If companies were just greedy they could have raised prices at any time before. They didn’t because they’re trying to find the optimal point between supply and demand to make the most profit (as we all do – are you willing to take a pay cut or eschew a raise you can probably get?)
All the money pumped into the economy is why they could raise prices – not just in 2020, but pretty consistently for the past 20 years. Lots of normal people are getting screwed but it’s fine for these companies because guess who gets much of the money being printed? Hint: donors.
A