if spotify employs an american and they become more experienced over their tenure were american resources extracted? human capital tends to get better with experience, particularly when dealing with high quality foreign management.
interesting. Manus is nominally a Singapore based company and should be immune to these actions. Tiktok argued that it was headquartered in Singapore with a Singaporean CEO. breaking singapore’s fig leaf might prove problematic in the long run.
> After a $75 million fundraising round led by U.S. venture firm Benchmark in May 2025, Manus shut its China offices in July, laying off dozens of employees. It then moved its operations to Singapore.
The company itself was based in mainland China less than 12 months ago.
Yeah if an American tech firm had been working in the US for 5 years and then tried to close all US offices down and move its IPs and tech to a different country so that it can sell out to Alibaba or Bytedance, I'm sure the US would react in the same exact way.
The sinophobia in this thread is ridiculous. Whether you agree or disagree with what China is doing, nothing is happening that wouldn't also happen in the US.
What sinophobia? I haven't seen anyone here talking shit about chinese indivuduals. Or are they trashing China (the nation-state)? If we count that as xenophobia, is any unjust criticism of USA "americanphobia"? If so, fine, but I'd rather not anthropomorphize megacorps with monopolies on violence.
You don't think it's possible that Japanophobia could fuel criticisms of Nintendo? Or that Russophobia could fuel criticisms against a Russian company?
One thing is to say that some of the comments may be motivated by xenophobia (could be true, but I'm no psychic, and you likely aren't either), another is to use the criticisms as proof of xenophobia.
Since you mentioned Nintendo, do you think the many criticisms(fair or otherwise) against Nintendo and their games are due to Japanophobia?
I think its fairly clear that, when talking bad about China, they are focusing on its goverment, not its people nor ethnicities.
i understand that perfectly, which is why i responded sarcastically to a point trying to connect this to TikTok's "argument" re their Singaporean CEO by pasting an infamous digression on that very topic.
seems to have gone over your head... i edited out the crack about your iq, which was done only because you chose to engage that way to begin with. i would respect an apology for misreading me more than trying to sanitize your earlier arrogance, but c'est la vie.
Some people are ethnonationalists, and the CEO of Tiktok, while he is Singaporean, is also ethnically Chinese. It seems pretty clear that is what the line of questioning was about, and just saying you are Singaporean and not Chinese does not answer the unstated question. Like his politics or not, it is obvious that Tom Cotton is not an idiot who does not understand that Singapore is not in China (like conversation was interpreted on the Internet when it happened)
What is the American ethnicity? Should all other ethnicities be subjected to the same round of questioning before the United States Congress?
I'm not sure why you are defending Tom Cotton's intelligence. Rule #1 of asking questions in a courtroom or a congressional setting is to anticipate the answers. Put more strongly, it is often said you should not ask a question you don't already know the answer to. If he thought he was going to elicit some Chinese "ethnonationalist" response, then he failed, and as such, was idiotic in pursuing this line of questioning. I agree with you he knows Singapore is not in China. That's not what makes his line of questioning stupid. It is that he essentially asks the same question multiple times and gets the same answer. The reason he looks dumb is because his line of questioning is dumb.
If he had some evidence the CEO was an "ethnonationalist" he could have confronted him with that. He doesn't and he didn't, so instead he committed himself to a bs line of questioning that ended up embarrassing him. If there is an unstated question as you claim, he could have asked it directly. He didn't. Why is that?
What did he achieve by this line of questioning, besides making himself look like a fool? This is his one job, he's one of only 100 people (really less) who gets these opportunities and this is the best he can do? Why are you making excuses for him? Demand better from your representatives.
I should note I am really straining to be charitable to your view. I think the real unstated, obvious subtext here is a white guy from Arkansas with the last name "Cotton" is openly trading in the same type of racist dog whistling his ancestors more than likely engaged in. I mean if we are just going to randomly accuse people of being ethnonationalists why not start with the Senator? Since you see no problem with crafting lines of inquiry based on your rather broad statement that "some people are ethnonationalists" (ok... and?) then maybe we should start with the Senator himself. I mean, why not? What makes the Tiktok CEO a more compelling suspect? I think it's obvious why the clip resonated beyond the feeble questioning - it's because many Americans can empathize with the CEO in this case. If the Senator had done his basic homework he would know Singapore doesn't allow dual citizens, so he already had his answer at the first question, which he would have already known if he had done any basic research. They are supposed to prepare for these things you know.
I mean I really am just disappointed in you, as an American citizen. The idea you need to have your representatives ask these kinds of questions in the United States on the off chance someone is an ethnonationalist... it just feels ironic. You should probably read up on your history most people who ask these types of questions from the seats of power in the United States Senate have historically been the ethnonationalists. As I stated if Cotton had evidence of his views, he could have raised them. Or asked about them directly. Instead he essentially asked the same question about his citizenship numerous times. Why?
I appreciate you replying in what I take to be good faith though. I don't mean to turn it into a question of race/ethnicity alone, which I gather will only alienate you. Then again, you are the one who brought up "ethnonationalism". I'm not even sure I know what exactly you mean by that term, but I find your invocation of it here to be suspect. But I am trying to be charitable to your position. The point remains his line of questioning did not clear up any "ethnonationalist" notions, but honestly I felt I had to edit this and be more straightforward with my criticism of your rejoinder. I just think you might want to consider why this clip resonated, instead of the straw man you seemed to posit (internet thinks Cotton thinks Singapore is in China).
Maybe it is about idealistic concepts like "ethnonationalism", but a pragmatic perspective is just that: someone with critical ties/stakes with PRC makes them vulnerable to PRC pressure (just look up PRC overseas police services, or the expanding reach of its National Security Law).
Tbh, its either naive or outright propagandistic to be surprised that powers with stakes on an issue won't pressure to have outcomes lean in their interests. There are centuries of examples of this.
And? What strawman are you attacking? No one disputed that pragmatic concern. How did Cotton's viral line of questioning help clarify if or how the CEO was "vulnerable to PRC pressure"?
Should American CEOs who do business in China be subjected to the same lines of questioning re their citizenship? You think Americans who do business in China aren't influenced or "vulnerable to PRC pressure"? China is a huge market, one of (if not perhaps the most) desirable in the whole world. You think American companies don't behave to please the PRC when operating in China?
Tbh it is either naive or outright propagandistic to be surprised at the idea that American citizens running international businesses are somehow immune to "PRC pressure" given the PRC is the government of one of the largest and most desirable markets in the entire world.
Tom Cotton's line of inquiry is embarrassing on all grounds. The fact you have to draw up a strawman to defend it says a lot. As with the claim of "ethnonationalism", if he had even a shred of concrete evidence re PRC pressure he could have brought it to bear and dispensed with the repetitive citizenship questionnaire.
The fact you shouldn't ask questions you don't know the answer to is one of the indicators that the judicial and legislative systems is broken. That's a principle that is hostile to inquisitive and curious reasoning.
a cross examination or a congressional hearing is not a university lecture.
would you like your liberty to be at risk just so a judge or a senator can satisfy their curiosity at your expense? do you have any idea what the penalties can be for failing to comply with a judicial or congressional subpoena? is the penalty of perjury consistent with "inquisitive and curious reasoning"? or is that an instrument of "hostility"?
it would not be a free country if the judicial and legislative systems were equated with "inquisitive and curious reasoning". if they want to serve that function they can give up their power to deprive people of their liberty.
If you want to flip the script and attack subpoenas, sure. Involuntary subpoena power is hostile in and of itself. It's form of indentured servitude or temporary slavery without even an accusation of crime or wrongdoing. I think it's morally abhorrent and I am not advocating for violence enforced subpoena power of those not even under indictment of misconduct to exist. These subpoenas themselves are not an exhibition of being 'free' as you proudly use the word.
I don't see how what you're saying as attacking what I'm saying. You're attacking involuntary subpoena power. I don't disagree with you. It's an interesting red herring, and I find it an interesting topic, so I'm happy to discuss it but not under the pretenses you are weakening my argument. But it's not impossible to get rid of subpoena power and still have judicial or legislative powers, even if you argue the judicial system will be less effective or some such (personally I think the benefits of being 'free' outweigh the advantages of subpoena).
Sorry, I simply don't know what point you are making. If you are trying to propose some alternative system that is one thing. I'm merely clarifying that your statement does not make sense in the context of the system we already have. It is not meant to be a red herring. The reason that adage about "don't ask questions..." even exists among trial lawyers is because of the state's great power over its own citizens (and others it has authority over).
Now I guess maybe what you are saying is that the state shouldn't have these powers, and therefore we should be able to more freely ask and answer questions in courts and congress, then fine. But I'm not sure I agree with that or I want to engage with whatever you proposed alternative is. I think simply it doesn't comport to equate some kind "hostility to inquisitive and curious reasoning" to the adage, because the point is that the courts are not a venue for such a thing.
Now if you think they should be, that is a separate argument. I don't see how any institution that has the power to deprive people of their liberty could ever be a venue for "inquisitive and curious reasoning". Which is why I said the courts and congress are not the universities. In fact, there is very good historical literature that elucidates the role of the university as something of a sovereign entity in the Western tradition given this almost definitional tension with the institutions of the state.
In reading the subtext in your comment, I think we may agree in more than a few areas, but we are just coming at this from slightly different directions. Again, the adage came up with respect to Cotton's performance as an examiner in the context where people in his position have great power to damage those sitting before him.
It's an adversarial system by design. If you want to redesign it fine, but the adage makes sense given this is the system. It applies to Cotton in this case as well, even if he is the state here, because naturally even though there will not be any real consequences for him, he still falls under the same risks re the success of making an argument in this kind of venue if you ask a question without considering the answer you will be eliciting. I also don't really think him asking essentially the same question about his citizenship multiple times is a species of "inquisitive and curious reasoning" anyway. So while I think I may sympathize with your general notions I'm not sure I really know what you are getting at.
How does feminism survive if this becomes the norm? If young men feel like they're expected to give more to their society it's natural to expect renumeration financial, socially or politically. Nordic countries don't seem to have this problem, but their conscription laws are quite relaxed compared to what the future will likely hold. A declining youth population almost certainly means greater youth repression (higher taxes for pensions, conscription, etc.)
Norways conscription law was much stricter until very recently. Military police was looking for me to hand deliver my draft notice up until I moved abroad because doing so allows them to charge you and imprison you if you don't show. At the time women were not called in at all. It didn't stop a rapid move towards more equality. And that eventually moved towards more women in the military. Couple that with a reduced need for recruits, and it was relaxed significantly for men.
EDIT: I moved in 2000. I finally took a call from the military police the day I landed in London, to gleefully tell them I'd left - the practice was that draft notices would not be delivered abroad, so moving effectively put an end to the matter. Norwegian law also required notifying the military if you left for more than 6 months, and provide evidence. I sent them a letter; they sent me one back demanding evidence. I told them the fact I'd received the letter was evidence and to stop bothering me. They did.
Basically, for the Americans who find this weird: In the countries in Europe where this is still a thing, this is a cold war holdover most places. When I was growing up air raid sirens were being tested monthly, and my primary schools' basement was a bomb shelter. It took a lot of time before things were relaxed after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Being able to serve is something the feminists have been fighting for the hardest over decades. The people who are trying to make young men only doing the killing the norm are the same people trying to end feminism. Therefore, there is some logic in your question.
When I was in Asia two years ago, as an American, every time I met a young Russian man escaping conscription, drinks were on me as appreciation to their commitment to world peace. I'm in South America now and it is being inundated with young Israeli men running like the Russians were. Nonetheless, I'm on the fence about how I feel buying them drinks.
This is not "being able to serve", this is "being forcefully drafted". Can you share a few links highlighting how vocal feminists have asked for the draft to be extended to women? Thanks.
I need to revise what I wrote. The protests and stance have all been against selective service for both men and woman. However, on the flip side, the stance for enlisting and volunteering are opposite. I'll let you Google that one to see if you think if "citation needed".
Do you agree that women and men should serve equally in front line combat?
I think it's misleading to credit what is happening in germany to feminism. It's a very toxic ideology and the best thing is to leave if you are discriminated by this (e.g. as young white heterosexual male).
It's not a toxic ideology at all. Sounds like you're misinformed by the social media. You should read a couple of books or see talks, or anything apart from Youtube comment section, really.
Whatever passes for feminism these days is toxic and a far cry from the idealism and drive for equality that borne it.
These days it’s only social-media driven culture war of hateful men that blame all the problems of the world to women vs hateful women that blame all the problems of the world to men.
The way out is not “manosphere” or “feminism” but understand that 1) we are different despite the claims to the contrary and 2) all are deserving of respect and we need both to have a healthy society.
We won’t get there with DEI initiatives, female quotas and remaking movies with a ‘diverse’ cast, that’s just posturing and stoking the growing fires of culture war to the benefit of social media operators.
How does the concept of the global citizen survive?
You have a group of citizens who are expected to perform military service, and another group who aren't really invested in the country and don't have to serve.
> How does the concept of the global citizen survive?
Why do we need this concept? Find a country you can be proud of, become a citizen, join its culture, and defend it when it is threatened. Don't go live somewhere or get citizenship just because it's convenient.
> Nordic countries don't seem to have this problem, but their conscription laws are quite relaxed compared to what the future will likely hold.
This seems very misinformed at least when it comes to Sweden. Upon war, everyone is obliged to defend the country. Nobody can leave unless you have a good reason.
It won’t and it never has. It’s not like society post-1945 developed the phenomenon for the first time in human history. Even in this country, New Jersey was the last state to ban women voting in 1807 iirc.
How can a state survive if this weren't the norm? Why would men fight and die for a government that views their own wives and daughters as cannon fodder? If the government is conscripting men's wives to war, is it really in the interest of men to risk their own lives to protect that government? If the government took my wife and sent her to war, I'd sooner firebomb a government office than join up to fight for the government.
If a woman wants to fight, that's another story entirely. But conscripting women? That's poison.
Chill, they will soon send robots because everybody else is going to give'em the finger or they're too slow and hard to replace. Look at Russia/Ukraine. Russia is sending minorities and North Koreans to war and they get blown up by drones assembled and flown by Ukrainians. I would totally assemble drones rather than dig trenches or crawl through mud infested with mines. Guess what the North Koreans are now doing in Kursk? De-mining.
There is a birth crisis. Modern, liberal women are not actually reproducing, they are not keeping their end of the evolutionary bargain (men protecting, sacrificing and dying, while women giving birth). Therefore, there is no need to maintain the old-fashioned, patriarchal system with women as a more protected group. Everyone should contribute equally, pull their own weight. Equal rights, equal lefts (responsibilities).
Western women are already only producing ~1.5 kids (many with none!), you could send 50% of young women to die in war, then have the other half have a fertility rate of 6, like what their great great grandmothers had, and we would be far far ahead already.
50 men and 50 women. You have to send 50 people to the front. You'd send 49 men, leave one behind for reproduction purposes, have 50 women at home and be short of 1 person.
Or we could embrace equality and send 25 men and 25 women, leaving behind 25 of each to do whatever they want.
We're not having this conversation in a cultural vacuum; men figure out at a young age that if things go to shit, their lives become expendable for the sake of the community. I view conscription as a form of slavery; something that I hope never happens to me or anybody, but could conceivably happen. That's the way the world has worked for thousands of years, and the Bayesian meme asks me to therefore bet on it continuing to be this way. But it doesn't have to be this way for women too. Why should it be, misery loves company? If men are going to be dying, we should draft women to die too? That's not feminism, that's insanity.
Why should men sacrifice and die for nothing, by not getting anything in return, not even a simple appreciation? Why should only men die when things get tough? I also would much rather see other unknown women die, than to send myself or my son to die for them.
Women need to pull their weight. And since they aren't doing that from the evolutional POV, neither in practice (birth crisis) nor in theory (not like giving birth is a legal duty, unlike a draft), then they can at least be useful for a society as a cannon fodder. The more women start pulling their weight and contribute, the less weight there will be for men to pull. What not to love about this equality!
The right reaction about bad things happening to a percentage of the population is to get rid of it if at all possible, not making everybody suffer from it.
If you don't expect males to voluntarily sacrifice and die for the country, why would you expect women to suffer nine months of body horror (provocatively stated) and expend multiple years of full-time care to raise children?
> And since they aren't doing that from the evolutional POV, neither in practice (birth crisis) nor in theory (not like giving birth is a legal duty, unlike a draft), then they can at least be useful for a society as a cannon fodder.
Women already contribute to society by being in the work force. If you think that's not enough, then you should probably think about rewarding them for doing something else.
> The right reaction about bad things happening to a percentage of the population is to get rid of it if at all possible, not making everybody suffer from it.
This is not an argument, neither from theoretical nor practical point of view. This is akin to saying "Yeah, you want a universal health care for everyone, but I want everybody to be so rich that they can buy any insurance and bear any sudden health-costs". Not an argument, is it.
The reality is the way it is. Wars are always going to be fought and no amount of toxic peace wishing will change that.
If anything, adding women to the equation would:
1. make the force stronger. Therefore, a higher probability of not being attacked, and a higher probability of dominating the enemy (thus decreasing the total amount of victims).
2. make the political decisions to start wars much harder (in a good way).
This is exactly the reason why I am against the current American fight-for-money military and am for compulsory army service (like Finland), and for both sexes at that.
> If you don't expect males to voluntarily sacrifice and die for the country, why would you expect women to suffer nine months of body horror (provocatively stated) and expend multiple years of full-time care to raise children?
That's my point exactly. If women are not doing their evolutionary job, why should men? There can only be 2 possible solutions:
1. no sex has any sex-specific obligations (be it giving birth or going to war)
2. or impose similar sex-specific obligations to both sexes.
Men already contribute to society by being in the work force (and do a much more important foundational work than women), and it is unfair to impose additional unilateral sexist obligations on only one sex.
I am against the hypocrisy and want equality between sexes (they don't have to be the same for both sexes, but if one has more obligations, they should be appropriately compensated by additional rights/privileges).
>Why should men sacrifice and die for nothing, by not getting anything in return, not even a simple appreciation?
Because a bunch of pissed off men is destabilizing, and what has worked in the past is sending them off to conquer/die under some glory laced pretense. The young men naturally vibe to it, the older men recognize the pattern and know it works.
>Why should only men die when things get tough? I also would much rather see other unknown women die, than to send myself or my son to die for them.
Women are incubators, and cannot be utilized as such if they are dead. Men are seeders, and can have measures taken to fulfill that role without being physically present.
Look, the rest is just fucking cope, man, not even good cope. Let me drop some facts to help you out. Until you're really willing to put your ass on the line for someone else, you don't really have the moral position to ask someone else to do it for you. Period. That's the thing you need to be angry about right now. You might get what you give. You give it all, you might get something back; you might get a hole in the head or somewhere else equally problematic; you might get a shot at white picket fence, wife, & three kids. You're being asked to give it all by assholes who have done nothing but take and demand. Sit with that idea for a bit, then recompute where you stand. It isn't about men vs. women. That's a distraction. It's about givers vs. takers, and takers are desperate to keep the givers from realizing that they are the ones being played/harvested. If the Givers actually wake up to the fact they are being manipulated, it is a guarantee the manipulator is the next target on the chopping block; because for the Givers, it's a moral imperative to protect their own. To wake up, you have to stop assuming benevolent intent and question really hard anyone who tells you to assume it. Good people don't need to tell you to assume good faith. They just act in good faith, and you reciprocate. If someone tells you to assume good faith, it is almost certainly because there isn't entirely good faith at play. It's exhausting, but sadly necessary. Now what you need to ask yourself, is am I speaking as a Giver or a Taker? Answer is, both. I want you to be more free. I want those who'd chain you to be less free to do so. I'm asking you to become less easy to govern. What am I giving up? Time, I guess, and the ability to as easily Take from you in the future. I'd rather live in a world of endless squabbling/questioning of motives than in one where assholes run roughshod over everyone because no one ever calls them on their bullshit. Acting trustworthy to gain trust isn't unbearable to me. Cost of doing business as they say. There are those however, who do find it unbearable, and those are the ones we should be targeting. Not each other.
> Because a bunch of pissed off men is destabilizing, and what has worked in the past is sending them off to conquer/die under some glory laced pretense.
Such was the way in the old times. At the same time when women were taking their own feminine role and were giving birth.
But this does not apply anymore. Check the population pyramids for various countries. Having a lot of young men that need their energy to be put somewhere is not a problem in modern Western societies.
Taken to its logical conclusion, you cannot have gender equality without either making the draft cover everyone or abolishing it entirely.
The fact that women losing their lives is so much larger a risk for the nation only serves to test the resolve of those people claiming to want gender equality, but this is not the only time you'll find a conflict between idealism and reality, even within the scope of gender equality.
It would be equality if there were a law forcing women to have children during a war. Which is insane and no one would support it.
But young men maybe dying after being forced to fight against their will? Completely fine.
It's honestly just very telling how in modern Western egalitarianism, gender essentialism is factually wrong and evil unless we're explaining why men need to die for their country.
Most young men don't have wives or daughters. It's not 1850 anymore.
I would rather both genders get drafted than be in a Ukraine situation where millions of women leave for richer countries while I am pulled off the street to go eat FPV drones. What's even the point? Why not surrender? What am I protecting or preserving?
This goes missed a lot in debates about conscription. The Iran war in the US and the Ukraine war in Russia enjoy very little popular support among military aged men. This is in stark contrast to WW2, and even in Vietnam there was still a strain of thinking of draft resisters as cowards. But wars in this day and age enjoy a shockingly tiny public mandate, and it's entirely possible that governments can only do a draft on paper. Putin is practically unable to push further mobilisation because the first round provoked such stiff violence and resistance.
Any ruler wants active units of production (humans extracting money or gold or food), and for that it has to bring some sort of stable life environment and not be too greedy so people don't try to revolt.
Whether you get such through political negotiation before or after a war, or through a vote, or through a revolution, is the same as the end.
How does a state survive if refugees/immigrants are imported en masse and then the state becomes so dysfunctional to such a degree that its male citizens must be conscripted to fight and die for it? Surely this is a recipe for disaster.
I would sooner die for my family and my country but I wouldn't lift a finger to save the lives of refugees/immigrants.
You die for your country and the refugees make the state survive. Germany becomes Deutschstan, Köln Dom is converted to a minaret and Hildegard is required to wear a hijab in public at all times, that's how. At least that's probably how Michel Houellebecq would imagine it.
How does a government express "anti-feminism". Surely you're not suggesting a reduction in voting power for women. So what else would make it seem "fair" to men in your mind?
> Surely you're not suggesting a reduction in voting power for women.
Why not? If the male side has "getting droned your legs off and people watching it in 4k", surely everything less than that has to be on the table for the female side. Not being able to vote physically yourself (you can still influence public opinion, eg through social media, imo a far more effective action than casting 1 vote)
Why would this affect feminism? If they want to fight for equal rights to conscription nobody is stopping them, and if they don't nobody is going to force them to. These gotchas don't really have any reflection on reality.
I am wondering if the affected men will demand preferential treatment as a consequence of service. Women currently benefit from disproportionate employment in the social safety net, affirmative action in German government hiring, etc. I would imagine that this would be essentially offensive to the men who are required to stay in the country, or face (potential future) conscription. I suspect the demands of European governments will increase as countries continue to age.
I would define feminism as the belief that on balance and in aggregate, there is a difference in the fairness that society accords to the genders and it's in favor of men.
The risk to feminism would be that this becomes so blatantly and obviously not true that no one can take it seriously. I don't think the continued draft of men would impact this because it's not a change to the status quo, and it isn't changing opinion in Ukraine.
the modern world emerged of rationalism, the end goal of AI & automated thinking is necessarily at odds with rationalism (systems will be increasingly illegible as AI accelerates progress). I believe this will fundamentally unmoor our civilization
I don't think this is true, at least for Tesla, which has a very mature and wide range of chargers almost everywhere. AFAIK, Rivian can also use Tesla chargers now.
I live on the eastern coast of the US. I travel for work up and down the eastern seaboard. Sometimes I ride with a coworker who drives his Tesla. The experience turned me off of ever buying one.
Yes, chargers are everywhere here. But making multiple “stops” to charge that you wouldn’t otherwise make definitely isn’t saving any time.
The seats are horrid.
Watching the windshield wipers freak out over nothing is funny.
We can despise Musk as much as we want, but I leased a Tesla Model 3 for three years and it was the best car I've ever owned. I had zero issues, it was always charged, zero maintenance(other than topping off washer fluid), and for long trips, I usually rent a car anyway. I seriously considered buying a Model S once my lease ended, but thanks to Musk’s shenanigans, I’m waiting for a Rivian R2 or R3 instead.
And yes Teslas aren't for passengers but for drivers.
Less than half of US occupied residences have a carport or garage that they own. Many single family homes lack a garage, particularly in the northeast US. And many in apartments lack access to power even if they have a garage.
I said just slightly less than half. It’s about 49%
Above, I said the current level of the adoption of EVs in the US is 1% to 2%. That’s how many vehicles on the road today are EVs.
As I’m sure you know there’s multiple places to charge electric vehicles. You can charge them at home but when you’re on a long trip, you have to charge them somewhere else.
We need more infrastructure investment, both in public charging and in residential charging. The public charging infrastructure that exist today supports that 1 to 2% of vehicles that are currently EVs.
I’m not sure it’s the infrastructure so much as the cost for these vehicles. Well, Tesla has political problems but Rivian and Lucid don’t - but they are priced quite high.
It's kind of a yes both. A base Model 3 is in the same price range as decent hybrids that will be more convenient for many owners given current highway adjacent charging infrastructure.
Of course there are also new vehicles that cost quite a bit less than a base Model 3, but they invite a discussion of not being all that comparable.
Sure if $37k is a lot for a car I’ll agree with you. Then I think Tesla is now just joining Rivian and Lucid by being too expensive. The infrastructure would be besides the point then because you don’t care about that if you can’t even afford the car.
37k with 20% down payment means you borrow $29k at say, a 4.79% interest rate for 60 months so... $556/month. I know we're on HN with high salaried tech workers but c'mon, that's a lot of money and doesn't even include insurance.
That and their base model 3 is RWD which makes it a non-starter for anyone who drives in snow/ice. The AWD model starts at $47k.
A Honda CRV Hybrid for example starts at $35k (Accord Hybrid is 34k) and that's a pretty common vehicle here in Ohio. We could debate the capabilities and such and what you get for your money, but I'm just not in an agreement that $37k is a lot of money for a car.
I've owned a base model 3 RWD and live in Ohio where we regularly get all of the weather, sometimes the same day even. I would rather drive that than an AWD Honda or Toyota or similar. The weight and center of gravity, especially with the right tires, makes it a very nice vehicle to drive in adverse conditions. Those "average" market SUVs aren't very good in snow/ice either. At least in my experience.
Well, speaking as someone who is moderately price sensitive, I'm probably going to shop for a used car.
I'm not sure people are reading my comments above as making 2 comparisons. I used "decent hybrids" as a group of cars that are roughly comparable to the Model 3, but more convenient in areas where chargers are sparse (in northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula, you pretty much have to plan your route to the available chargers).
And then I noted that there are cars that are available for quite a lot less, so anyone that is price sensitive probably isn't going to be shopping for a new electric vehicle that costs nearly $40k.
Yea I think we got side-tracked here in discussing what is affordable. But my point was that the big 3 EV makers in the United States: Tesla, Lucid, Rivian are either politically uncompetitive (Tesla) or financially uncompetitive (all three if you are also arguing Tesla is too expensive) and because of that the charging infrastructure isn't relevant if you are already thinking the car itself costs too much.
As an aside I've been to the UP and it's lovely up there. At the time (2020) there weren't really any charging stations except Maciniac City where there was a Tesla Supercharger and Marquette where, my wife and I found ourselves for about 12 hours charging our car in a parking garage. But Tesla has built a few new Superchargers in the area and they are to varying degrees open to other EV manufacturers.
It's not even the infrastructure. It's generally a lot of FUD. Everyone fears they have to buy a 800-mile range SUV for the frequent roadtrips they take apparently. I commute 1000 miles every month. That is 4x DCFC every month vs 2.5 petrol fillups for the same period.
I also know a lot of drivers who plan to get an EV when their current car stops working. A lot of people are feeling economically anxious right now. They know gas is a dead end so they are squeezing every last mile out of the cars they currently own. Car companies can't exist on the wishes of their customers. Everyone is doing a lot of hoping that its the right time. The EV rebates were a great tool in getting to that tipping point but they were cancelled too son in my estimation.
This doesn't really pay attention to token costs. If I'm making a series of statically dependent calls I want to avoid blowing up the context with information on the intermediary states. Also, I don't really want to send my users skill.md files on how to do X,Y & Z.
When measuring speed running blue team CTFs ("Breaking BOTS" talk at Chaos Congress), I saw about a ~2x difference in speed (~= tokens) for a database usage between curl (~skills) vs mcp (~python). In theory you can rewrite the mcp into the skill as .md/.py, but at that point ... .
Also I think some people are talking past one another in these discussions. The skill format is a folder that supports dropping in code files, so much of what MCP does can be copy-pasted into that. However, many people discussing skills mean markdown-only and letting the LLM do the rest, which would require a fancy bootstrapping period to make as smooth as the code version. I'd agree that skills, when a folder coming with code, does feel like largely obviating MCPs for solo use cases, until you consider remote MCPs & OAuth, which seem unaddressed and core in practice for wider use.
But that's the current primary use case for AI. We aren't anywhere close to being able to sanitise input from hostile third parties enough to just let people start inputting prompts to my own system.
there's a whole world of AI tools out there that don't focus on developers. These tools often need to interact with external services in one way or another, and MCP gives those less technical users an easy way to connect e.g. Notion or Linear in a couple of clicks, with auth taken care of automatically. CLIs are never replacing that use case.
contra-pessimism: My parents run a small organic farm on the east coast — (greenhouses, not row crops) and they extensively use chatgpt for decision making They obviously haven’t built out agentic data gathering, but can easily prompt it with the required information. they’re quite happy with everything.
I’m guessing this will screw up in assuming infinite labor & equipment liqudity.
I don't know how to really accept the fact that America is becoming a dramatically more corrupt country at the population and political level. It reminds me of growing up in the third world where the line between cop & bandit was blurred.
The entire piece keeps telling you to ignore the people in question, their statements and their preferences. It wants to push this doomer narrative of left behind people, while ignoring that communities are putting these banks together & the government is actively supporting them.
I think mischaracterizing this as a sign of collapse (a word that I'd only use for the result being a permanent state of affairs), it does point towards a sort of extreme economic distress that's difficult to overstate.
this seems overly polemic. My parents live on a small farm and heat their home with firewood. My dad likes splitting wood, and it’s marginally cheaper since they own a plot of woodland. Although, they have a brand new heat pump they prefer to use their wood burning stove. It’s fairly common but in my experience it’s primarily a lifestyle choice not economic . People who chose to live out their also like the resiliency given their libertarian/prepper tendencies. it’s annoying because this entire piece is predicated on ignoring everything locals actually say.
I'm burning wood for primary heat, and I agree with the thrust of the article - despite its poor job of making the case with data or even anecdotes.
There is so much work fundamentally involved in handling firewood. It's much different to be burning wood when you have the resources to make handling it easier, or when you're doing it as a mere option for supplementary heat. For example, as I split (log splitter) or it gets delivered (from someone who owns a firewood processor), I stack it in IBC totes to sit around and season. I then move those with a tractor so they're right next to an outdoor wood boiler. So I basically touch each piece twice, with optionality for whether I am going to make a project of cutting down trees or just pay for it. Or I've got a few friends that get it all delivered, stack their own big wood piles, then move it to a smaller thing to carry it indoors, but only to supplement central heat which they keep lower.
Whereas when you're doing it out of necessity, and trying to conserve even then, there is just so much more human effort that gets used. It does make sense to view it in terms of societal collapse, or at the very least poverty. This fall, I saw a bunch of houses in denser areas - grapple loads delivered to tiny front yards, and they're out there making sense of it with just a chainsaw and hand tools. I presume they were going to burn it this winter, too. That doesn't seem like a good use of anyone's time, effort, or risk appetite.
A good litmus test: what kind of vehicles are people picking the wood from wood banks with? If there are a bunch of people loading their car trunks and whatnot every few days, that's not a good scene. If the same volunteers are delivering truckbeds (and stacking them) to needy older people who had burnt wood their entire life but are having trouble managing it now, that's less dire.
