A deregulated EV market could actually be a game changer.
A friend of mine grew up in China. He told me about going to high school, and there were these little three-wheeled electric vehicles that were only a couple thousand dollars each, and they were not fully fledged automobiles but they were weatherproof transportation. Not only did it mean that students could have transportation of their own, it also meant that many of those students could go off and sell their services after school as a low rent taxi service. Eventually, the Chinese government got really embarrassed by these little three-wheel things and it didn't project the image of power that they wanted, so they banned them.
I really believe that a deregulated EV market that put this sort of vehicle front and center would change a lot.
A friend of mine grew up in China. He told me about going to high school, and there were these little three-wheeled electric vehicles that were only a couple thousand dollars each, and they were not fully fledged automobiles but they were weatherproof transportation. Not only did it mean that students could have transportation of their own, it also meant that many of those students could go off and sell their services after school as a low rent taxi service. Eventually, the Chinese government got really embarrassed by these little three-wheel things and it didn't project the image of power that they wanted, so they banned them.
I really believe that a deregulated EV market that put this sort of vehicle front and center would change a lot.
On the topic, I think future generations are going to be rejecting technology as a social institution. Not entirely, but definitely to the degree that the first generation embraced it.
You can live in a situation today where you can convince a million people to press a button to say that you are their friend, and not have anyone to help you move a couch. People are slowly beginning to realize the absurdity of this.
You can live in a situation today where you can convince a million people to press a button to say that you are their friend, and not have anyone to help you move a couch. People are slowly beginning to realize the absurdity of this.
Problem is that government dwarfs most capital at this point. The entire fortune 500 is only 97 trillion dollars, and much of those assets aren't American, so even if you sieze every US asset you might be able to balance things out......once..... But the beast is still hungry and having gutted the wealth production centers it'd just be the beginning of the end...
lol irrelevant people attending an irrelevant awards show for an irrelevant industry.
Honestly, you're right that the people ended up being totally wrong in their assessment, but the media was powerful and was able to paint him that way.
Man, Obama was a huge bait and switch in almost every way. It's amazing, and people still deify the guy.
Man, Obama was a huge bait and switch in almost every way. It's amazing, and people still deify the guy.
I see it in certain corners of the Internet. It's shocking how much vicious hatred you see, and really very little understanding of the people they hate so much because the teevee told them to.
One of the things a lot of people lost in the tribalism of US politics is the fact that Donald Trump was voted in for the same reason Barack Obama was voted in -- they hoped that he would come in as a relative outsider and change things while an entrenched elite appeared to be taking more and more from the common man.
I think the fact that Trump spoke to the working and middle class and said "I see you're hurting and I want to help" compared to the establishment that said "You're better off than you've ever been sit down shut up and be happy" and was increasingly turning darker -- to "you working class and middle class idiots are all a bunch of monsters and we hate you, you should strive to become someone we like more"
The establishment has been mask off for a few years, and is openly hateful and disdainful of anyone who isn't exactly, specifically, and exclusively whatever they demand people be in the moment, including aligning on race, sexuality, gender identity and more. If the commoners aren't marching in lockstep with whatever the current demands are then they're not just wrong or in disagreement but evil and stupid, at least in the rhetoric of the establishment.
Many people who voted for Trump had Bernie Sanders as their #2, and vice versa which doesn't make sense from a tribal standpoint, but makes perfect sense from the sense of a working and middle class seeing their lives fading away and looking for someone to come in and break the elite's power.
That's also why it's looking like Trump could win another term despite being the categorical target of a twenty four hour hate campaign for 7 years and the full might and fury of the US government and a good number of states -- The establishment has been pissing on the common man and telling them it's raining for years and seeing them do the same to him only establishes him as more like the common man than the elites despite his obvious status as a capitalist elite.
I think the fact that Trump spoke to the working and middle class and said "I see you're hurting and I want to help" compared to the establishment that said "You're better off than you've ever been sit down shut up and be happy" and was increasingly turning darker -- to "you working class and middle class idiots are all a bunch of monsters and we hate you, you should strive to become someone we like more"
The establishment has been mask off for a few years, and is openly hateful and disdainful of anyone who isn't exactly, specifically, and exclusively whatever they demand people be in the moment, including aligning on race, sexuality, gender identity and more. If the commoners aren't marching in lockstep with whatever the current demands are then they're not just wrong or in disagreement but evil and stupid, at least in the rhetoric of the establishment.
Many people who voted for Trump had Bernie Sanders as their #2, and vice versa which doesn't make sense from a tribal standpoint, but makes perfect sense from the sense of a working and middle class seeing their lives fading away and looking for someone to come in and break the elite's power.
That's also why it's looking like Trump could win another term despite being the categorical target of a twenty four hour hate campaign for 7 years and the full might and fury of the US government and a good number of states -- The establishment has been pissing on the common man and telling them it's raining for years and seeing them do the same to him only establishes him as more like the common man than the elites despite his obvious status as a capitalist elite.
Obviously you can judge kids and parents in extreme cases, but one fact about someone really doesn't make much sense to judge, especially when the fact is that a kid is the very best on the planet earth at something which is pretty amazing.
Kids are funny. They end up really intensely interested in a thing, and their life can revolve around it for quite a while. What do you do? Just shut down their interests because it doesn't match with your conception of what a kid ought to be interested in?
Sometimes, if it's affecting the rest of their lives. If this kid isn't making friends, or isn't doing well in school, or other negative factors maybe it's time to hang up the controller for a bit, but on the other hand, we have a society that's trying to hard to teach kids to be self-confident. There's no healthier way to find self-confidence than to do really hard things and succeed at them. Imagine being the best on the planet earth and being the first person to play the game so hard you broke it!
I think if my son did this, I wouldn't mock him, I'd congratulate him while making sure he's still staying somewhat well-rounded in the rest of his life.
Kids are funny. They end up really intensely interested in a thing, and their life can revolve around it for quite a while. What do you do? Just shut down their interests because it doesn't match with your conception of what a kid ought to be interested in?
Sometimes, if it's affecting the rest of their lives. If this kid isn't making friends, or isn't doing well in school, or other negative factors maybe it's time to hang up the controller for a bit, but on the other hand, we have a society that's trying to hard to teach kids to be self-confident. There's no healthier way to find self-confidence than to do really hard things and succeed at them. Imagine being the best on the planet earth and being the first person to play the game so hard you broke it!
I think if my son did this, I wouldn't mock him, I'd congratulate him while making sure he's still staying somewhat well-rounded in the rest of his life.
I'm not sure. If I were a serious leader, I wouldn't want to interrupt my opponent making unforced error after unforced error.
History is written by the people who write history, and sustained by the people who curate history.
That seems self-evident when I say it, but it's important. The winners sometimes but not always end up writing the history books, and those history books need to make it to the modern day as well as the means to read those history books.
The Minoan civilization is a perfect example. They appear to have preceded the Mycenaean Greeks, and they were by what we can tell an outrageously powerful player in the region, having writing and sophisticated architecture, and art. It appears that their history was told in the story of the minotaur and suggested that it was able to get human sacrifices from the local mainland due to their water superiority. The thing is, in the bronze age collapse their civilization ended and nobody who was involved with their civilization wanted to pass on their script (presumably because they were such a horrible civilization to exist under the thumb of) and so today we can't even read their history books even though they wrote it all down. The only history we have is from the Greek perspective told allegorically through that story of the minotaur. The Greeks didn't really win per se, no more than any other civilization that existed after another one did, but that one was wiped from history.
Another example would be the writings of the Mayans. There were all kinds of writings, but the Spanish who came over were so disgusted by the culture of human sacrifice that they found every book and burned it, and today all we have left is the Dresden codex, a tiny scrap compared to the millennia of history previously recorded. Europeans colonized many civilizations but didn't do to every civilization what the Spanish did to the Mayans.
For an alternative example, look at the dark ages in Europe. Many writings were lost in that time, but Arab scholars had curated Greek philosophers works and eventually those works (often commented on by the Arab scholars during the brief Muslim golden age of scholarship) returned to the west after millennia. But for the curation of a completely different culture, these works would have been lost forever in the west.
Another example would be the Indian civilization. In terms of winning wars, the Indian subcontinent isn't very defensible, and on a number of occasions it was totally taken over. We all know about the English successfully colonizing India, but it's far from the first. I recall one example of Muslims coming over and absolutely ransacking the place, using superior military technology to totally defeat the ruling class. You'd think this is the story of the Indians losing everything, but in each case the Indian culture persevered. I consider it to be a sort of immortal culture, because the Muslims became more Indian in the face of such culture. Even the English became slightly more Indian, and when the English left, what remained was some English culture (It was a very powerful culture as well), but also a powerful Indian culture that remained despite everything. (On the other hand, their history is really hard to ascertain despite having millennia of it because their culture doesn't consider time to be a straight line or the world to be something worth paying as much attention to as the spiritual world that is more real)
On the other hand, it shows how arbitrary the "right side of history" really is. History doesn't choose based on moral merit, but on many factors that determine the survivability of a set of ideas.
That seems self-evident when I say it, but it's important. The winners sometimes but not always end up writing the history books, and those history books need to make it to the modern day as well as the means to read those history books.
The Minoan civilization is a perfect example. They appear to have preceded the Mycenaean Greeks, and they were by what we can tell an outrageously powerful player in the region, having writing and sophisticated architecture, and art. It appears that their history was told in the story of the minotaur and suggested that it was able to get human sacrifices from the local mainland due to their water superiority. The thing is, in the bronze age collapse their civilization ended and nobody who was involved with their civilization wanted to pass on their script (presumably because they were such a horrible civilization to exist under the thumb of) and so today we can't even read their history books even though they wrote it all down. The only history we have is from the Greek perspective told allegorically through that story of the minotaur. The Greeks didn't really win per se, no more than any other civilization that existed after another one did, but that one was wiped from history.
Another example would be the writings of the Mayans. There were all kinds of writings, but the Spanish who came over were so disgusted by the culture of human sacrifice that they found every book and burned it, and today all we have left is the Dresden codex, a tiny scrap compared to the millennia of history previously recorded. Europeans colonized many civilizations but didn't do to every civilization what the Spanish did to the Mayans.
For an alternative example, look at the dark ages in Europe. Many writings were lost in that time, but Arab scholars had curated Greek philosophers works and eventually those works (often commented on by the Arab scholars during the brief Muslim golden age of scholarship) returned to the west after millennia. But for the curation of a completely different culture, these works would have been lost forever in the west.
Another example would be the Indian civilization. In terms of winning wars, the Indian subcontinent isn't very defensible, and on a number of occasions it was totally taken over. We all know about the English successfully colonizing India, but it's far from the first. I recall one example of Muslims coming over and absolutely ransacking the place, using superior military technology to totally defeat the ruling class. You'd think this is the story of the Indians losing everything, but in each case the Indian culture persevered. I consider it to be a sort of immortal culture, because the Muslims became more Indian in the face of such culture. Even the English became slightly more Indian, and when the English left, what remained was some English culture (It was a very powerful culture as well), but also a powerful Indian culture that remained despite everything. (On the other hand, their history is really hard to ascertain despite having millennia of it because their culture doesn't consider time to be a straight line or the world to be something worth paying as much attention to as the spiritual world that is more real)
On the other hand, it shows how arbitrary the "right side of history" really is. History doesn't choose based on moral merit, but on many factors that determine the survivability of a set of ideas.
You're not wrong, I've written at length before about how "artificial intelligence" is more artificial than intelligent, and once you start using outside of carefully curated demos the limitations become clearer and clearer. They're just highly sophisticated algorithms running off of massive (illegal) data sets.
One thing I really love about the fediverse is that I can post what really are long-form essays about things and people respond and give feedback, in the same timeline as someone posting 4chan greentext and pictures of cute girls doing silly things.
Good to see they're finally getting the only thing Australia has left to worry about on earth put to bed.
I need to play with qb64 at some point. I hear it has some advantages over FB which went in a different direction.