So I read through the article, and it seems like this guy has a lot of selection bias. He makes the claim that nothing is done about right-wing protesters, but completely ignores that the J6 trials happened, and right-wing extremists do actually face charges for violent or criminal acts.

He also spends more time on that than elaborating on his claim that “inequality demands oppression” or talking about that in greater analytical detail.

This just seems like ragebait.

I’ve adopted a policy of buying the latest iPhone every 5 years, which is about how long they tend to last in my experience. So far it’s worked out well.

How you pay for charging is super weird in those cases. I think you have to enter your card info into the car’s OS or something, or it’s more restrictive? Either way, pretty stupid since there are times when you want to just go to a card reader (like with a work credit card on a work trip) and just pay normally.

I don’t think this will be necessary in the future, if we’re going to have widespread EV adoption, charging stations need to become more like gas stations.

Now I’m curious how easy it will be to retrofit existing vehicles with a NACS connector. Ideally the voltage should be compatible, and you’d just have to change the port. But I’m not completely sure.

The E195 is a bit too small for mainline use, though a good aircraft otherwise. The others however I’m not sure are ready for the prime time.

The Comac has potential, it’s a completely new aircraft developed for the Chinese domestic market, I don’t know if it will be sold in the west though. One issue is that the aircraft market doesn’t lend itself to new players. Planes typically last 30 years give or take, so taking on a new type from an unproven manufacturer is a big risk. It could, however, be successful in the long term.

Irkut is majority owned by the Russian government, and given the war, is likely going to have issues. It has flown, but now they have to move to entirely homegrown parts, which will likely make the aircraft completely shit.

Speaking of, the Tupolev Tu-204. It is still in production, and since the war started it has begun to ramp up again. Unfortunately it still has significant problems. For an aircraft built today, it still uses a three person cockpit crew, and is very underpowered. It also has had nearly no changes since its introduction in 1989, and is way behind pretty much any aircraft of its size.

It’s worth considering how much room there is in the airliner market for more competitors. Since aircraft require a huge amount of R&D, you have to sell a lot of them to break even. So if there’s too many manufacturers vying for a finite market, it gets hard to find any RoI. This has happened a lot historically, it’s like streaming services except you can’t actually get anyone to buy duplicates and very rarely will anyone split their orders.

There are considerable safety concerns regarding private jets, mostly down to the quality of the pilots. At the bigger airlines, pilots are unionized and have consistent schedules they work and routes and aircraft they fly. It’s reliable work and where most pilots (even military) end up.

Meanwhile private aviation needs to be flexible and easy to set up. Contrary to your comment this is the sector that you can usually expect to find more unscrupulous operations and pilots who are basically just Some Guy. Most of the near miss accidents lately have involved private planes (though that can often be attributed to problems in the ATC network).

As for the doors that’s more of a Boeing specific problem, they’ve made a lot of questionable business decisions in recent years and this is the fallout of that. Airbus planes don’t seem to have this problem, and customers seem to be making it clear that they would like their planes to work thank you very much.

They pollute more than you think, and using concrete is very rare in certain parts of the world. Outside of elevated roads I’ve never seen in used in my area or any part of the northern US.

I must say, you’re the first person I’ve seen to cite ChatGPT as a source.

I literally just told you two things that make them more dangerous, what makes them safer?

I don’t fully understand why SUVs are more profitable. What makes them worth more than a minivan or wagon for instance. I know premium versions of both those vehicle types exist (actually I’m pretty sure some of the only new wagons you can buy today are from premium German brands.)

We would also have to get rid of tires to do that, tires pollute a lot. And roads too, heavier vehicles wear out roads faster, and asphalt requires petroleum products to produce.

I’d wager most people have been in one considering how common they are, doesn’t make them any less terrible. Size is definitely a problem, they are very space inefficient, and quite dangerous. The center of gravity is very high, and because the front end is high up, anyone hit by it is more likely to end up under the vehicle. The solution is to lower them down to make them safer, and replace them with safer and more efficient vehicles like station wagons and minivans.

Georgeism

If you live in a place where this is becoming the norm, that’s exactly what you do.

A far more above board and less vibes-based way to pay.

It’s important to require disclosure of the service fee. In my experience usually listed at the bottom of the menu. I know at least in some instances there are crowdsourced master lists of restaurants with hidden fees, and enforcement of disclosure requirements seems to have stepped up.

I actually support phasing tips out for service fees, less dodgy and less influenced by cognitive biases from customers toward certain genders or ethnicities of staff.

DO NOT HUMP

The New Pornographers - Whiteout Conditions

I remember this album from when it came out, but I first heard this song again about a month ago. It encapsulates y feelings about the Gaza war, and how the more I learn, the more I feel like there are very few moral choices one can make.

True, I’d expect pretty wild conspiracies like flat earth and chemtrails to be laughed at here, but a disturbing number of lemmings and even progressives in general follow a set of less outlandish - but more insidious - conspiracies that usually fall into the “collusion and malice” type. I could say that General Motors et al. killed most of the US passenger rail and streetcar systems, and most people here would accept that as a fact. Case closed, capitalism is evil and should be abolished, every bad thing is cause by someone with I’ll intentions making it worse.

I, however, tend to be suspicious of those sorts of takes in general. Returning to the alleged “streetcar conspiracy”I’ve actually done quite a lot of research into this and can decidedly say that the primary cause of the decline of mass transit in the US was… There were at least 5 primary causes, none of which were shadowy groups deliberately working to destroy it. Rather it was killed by a changing urban environment, failures to adapt to modal shifts, legacy streetcar systems just generally sucking, and local governments taking transit for granted and assuming that they can hold streetcar companies to exacting standards while expecting them to remain solvent, all while not considering it their problem.

I could go on, and can send some sources and references (maybe not direct links though) if you’d like to learn more. But my main point is that far too many people assume there’s a nefarious actor pulling the strings the whole time when it’s usually several factors lining up all the holes in the Swiss cheese and creating a negative externality we still talk about to this day.

There (usually) isn’t a conspiracy, and if there is it’s unlikely to be anywhere near as all-encompassing as you think. People say there is because it gives them someone to blame, helps channel their anger at something tangible, and just makes a good story.