woodandsteel

11 ms·

61.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
>One could equally argue that the fact we don't have a million mile battery already suggests that there may be intractible problems to solve. That would be a good argument if batteries had been stuck for decades at a much lower limi
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by woodandsteel 6y ago
You don't offer any other approach. So I am going to assume you probably think soda drinking is a good thing, but don't want to come right out and say it.
63.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
>We would still have had the Great Depression, and we would have gotten the political disaster then. I hate to say it, but I have to admit you are probably right.
64.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
One of the many mistaken arguments of the fossil fuels forever crowd is that if there is anything wrong today with ff replacements, we can be absolutely certain technology will never in the future correct it.
65.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
I think HN should have a rule that no paywalled link be published unless a way around the paywall is provided.
66.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
Your point that the French were taking the Realist position re: the German problem makes a whole lot of sense to me. But what about Keynes idea that Europe as a whole was in economic ruin and it was necessary to rebuild it with economic aid
67.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
Whether or not the heat record is as extreme as presented, the fact is the arctic is getting warmer twice as fast as the world as a whole. And that is leading to huge changes, most notably permafrost melting, which has all sorts of conseque
68.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
Thank you for replying. I think a lot about these issues, but I haven't really talked with someone on the left about them. Let me see if I understand what you are saying. First of all, I get the impression you are a democratic socialis
69.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
I started this discussion about Marxism-Leninism because I believe that Marxist-Leninist countries invariably turn brutal, for various reasons (and you seem to basically agree with me). That being the case, Chomsky should have assumed from
70.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
Oh you have to be kidding. I grew up in the 50's, and things are so much more difficult for young people today. If they are in the upper quarter of society they have to compete so much harder, and if they are below that they are so muc
71.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
Thank you for giving an answer. But you know, the original idea of Marxism was that the revolution would take place in the advanced industrial states, which have the greatest military power and so would not face this sort of threat. But whe
72.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
Yes, they were. What I am saying is they were that because they were Marxist-Leninists. Pol Pot and Mao started out as Marxist-Leninists and that lead them to establish military dictatorships. That set of prior ideological ideas leads inevi
73.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
The promise of the free market economy is that the standard of living keeps improving over time, and that includes housing. For probably a majority of the population of the US, that has not been the case for a number of decades.
74.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
So private equity is going to ruin yet another successful company?
75.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
What is your own overall view of the Khmer Rouge, and ditto Mao? And have your views changed over time? Let me say where I am coming from here. The Khemer Rouge and Mao had in common certain ideas. They were for socialism, and they were for
76.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
I would much rather someone made a laptop with a keyboard with sculptured keys and reasonably full key travel. I would be glad to lose a pound of lightness for that.
77.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
Cancel culture people do not believe in freedom of speech. They do not believe in free and open debate. The cancel culture people have a set of views on topics such as race. They further believe that every institution should have an elabora
78.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
Thank you, that's a very interesting comment.
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by woodandsteel 6y ago
This is a very informative article, but it has one major deficiency. I have a general rule that when we are looking at something going bad in our country, one of the things to do is look at how the issue is handled in other countries, like
80.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
From what I understand, the basic problem is this. The way things are supposed to work is corporations take their profits and divide them up in two ways. Part goes to paying the owners, like dividends to stockholders. Part goes in investing
81.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
I'm an American and a few years ago I started getting into Japanese musicians (Senri Kawaguchi, Kanade Sato, Yoyoka Soma, Rie Suzaku, Juna Serita and others). This got me into reading a little about how the Japanese write and it's
82.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
Thank you. I think HN should have a rule that no paywalled link be published without including an alternative.
83.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
Thank you for the explanation.
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by woodandsteel 6y ago
History shows again and again that where there is a major technological transformation in an industry, some or all of the incumbents fail to make the change, and some of the major powers afterwards are new companies. Also, Tesla is getting
85.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
I first learned about this when I saw a youtube video of a music performance at a mall, and some of the people walking by were wearing face masks. Some commenters asked what was going on, and other commenters explained how the Japanese love
86.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
The thing you have to keep in mind about corporations is that, unlike human beings, they lack consciences, at least most of them. They may say they have them, but for various reasons this is usually not at all true. As a consequence, corpor
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by woodandsteel 6y ago
About 40 years ago I was reading a business mathematics book and ran across a section that, as I recall, started out with a basic probabilities equation and derived the basic Bayesian equation in one step. Am I remembering this right? If so
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by woodandsteel 6y ago
Tesla's price seems crazy, but it's not. In the coming few years the market for ev's is going to skyrocket, and the market for ice's is going to start to collapse. There are several reasons this will happen. For one, glo
89.
by woodandsteel 6y ago
For many years I shopped once a month at the local Walmart, mostly groceries. Now we have the coronavirus. There is no home delivery from the store. I would like to do pickup from there, but almost nothing I would buy is available for that
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by woodandsteel 6y ago
Right. Because these utilities have, as Ruban says, "political and budget power" they are fat and happy, and don't bother with engineering innovation.

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