Desert Tortoise comments

Wandora, in business there is an old but very true saying; the customer is always right. As a business owner you defy that at great risk. Elon Musk is finding this out the hard way. The users of Twitter, the likely customers for Twitter's former advertisers, do not want to have share a site with far right haters, white power advocates or the anti LGBTQ+ crowd. The want no part of that bunch. When Elon Musk changed the moderation rules and allowed Twitter / X to be overwhelmed with haters the likely customers of those advertisers fled. They knew they would lose customers if they did not, and they didn't see the haters becoming a viable customer base to replace the one they had.

The funny thing about hate and discrimination is that the human mind seems hard wired and pre-disposed to these faults. I grew up in a highly racist environment taught things like "if God intended the races to mix he would not have put them on separate continents", etc. We were literally taught that in Church btw. But I have learned that sort of thinking is wrong and do not want that kind of bigotry in my life so I exclude the haters from my circle of friends and acquaintances. It is just not healthy to be around. And it is a constant struggle every day against the ingrained tendency to discriminate. So I don't have a lot of patience for the haters any more. I understand them too well but learned that it poisons your soul and makes you a very bad person.

That is not meant to be scolding, but the lessons learned from a long and productive life.

Btw, as you can see from the bathtub ring on the church spire, even when Mediano Reservoir is at its maximum elevation the top of the spire is exposed above the water, a sad reminder of what lies beneath the surface of the water.

Here are some facts about the reservoirs and the towns that were submerged when the reservoirs were filled.

https://ordesasobrarbe.com/en/espacios/pueblos-ahogados-recorrido-por-los-pueblos-que-lindan-los-pantanos-de-mediano-y-del-grado/

So it seems that severe droughts must have occurred in Spain before, because it would have taken years to build that stone church in the middle of a lake, only to have it covered by water later on. What was the cause of the severe droughts many centuries ago? Manmade climate change too? If not, how can we believe this time that we did it, but it was something else back then?

The lake is an artificial reservoir created by damming the river that runs through that valley. The old church was submerged when the reservoir behind the dam was filled. Now the lake is mostly empty and the formerly submerged church is revealed, much as old towns and wrecks are being revealed on the formerly submerged but now dry lake bed of Lake Meade. It is what happens when there isn't enough rainfall to meet the demands of the reservoirs users. The lake dries up. This is a man made problem.

Unemployment numbers are useless. They are a facade and relic from the Depression. Once people run out of unemployment benefits, they are dropped from the rolls. Anyone unemployed more than six months is not counted. After you are counted as unemployed, you cannot be counted again if you become unemployed again. 

None of that is true. Regardless of whether or not one is collecting unemployment benefits, if someone is not working but actively looking for work they are counted in the unemployment statistics. If you get a job and are subsequently laid off you are again counted as unemployed.

How do I say this nicely. SONY's IT security past is not the best. Creating consumer electronics isn't the same as building secure systems.

The North Koreans pretty much proved that /:

Before throwing too many stones Ricky read up on the May 2022 central Michigan dam failures. If I didn't kill too many brain cells on liberty in Hong Kong the dams permits to operate had expired years earlier and their operator was having a pissing contest with the state about safety upgrades the utilities that owned the dams claimed were unnecessary.

This sort of thing happens in every country. I'm not convinced it is possible to prepare any city to absorb over 200 mm of rain per day for three days straight.

Btw, even in the US dam operators will open spillway gates and other outlet works flooding everything downstream to prevent the water from going over the top of the dam, which generally leads to a complete failure of the dam. Sometimes dam operators are presented with situations where there are no really good choices, only a least worst one. No conspiracy there. It comes with the territory.

This shows the need for human activity to control the effects of natural events.

I was thinking it shows the futility of man trying to control nature. The more intelligent course of action is to not build or re-build in a flood plain.

Anti-corruption will put a target on anybody's back in the venal jungle of politics and, in poverty-stricken, sicario-infested South America, it's a way of making deadly enemies without even trying .

It might just be me but I suspect the candidates strong words against drug cartels got him shot.

I like the old 1960s Honda ad that said "you meet the nicest people on a Honda".

a factory that makes optical equipment for Russia's security forces

They make night vision equipment among other military hardware. It was formerly a munitions plant so who knows what might have been left lying around in a warehouse or store room on site.

Bad news for Insurance companies because the average house in Hawaii is probably $2 million.

Depending on the county single family homes sell for $900K to $1.23M, with a $1M median. Condos go for less.

I want to see how a robotaxi handles a typical UK roundabout. But I want to see it from a safe distance O_O

Fission can be all of those things but we went down the light water path to start and no one has been funded to do the molten salt reactors.

Both the US and Soviet navies experimented with sodium cooled reactors, another name for molten salt. Both navies eventually rejected the technology for operational submarines. In the US Navy's case the reactor was removed at the earliest opportunity and replaced with a pressurized water reactor (USS Seawolf), The Soviets hung on to theirs longer and built more boats. The overarching problem is that the if the sodium coolant (molten salt) is allowed to cool it turns into a metallic solid. That means that if you do not have some sort of external heat source and circulate the coolant to keep it molten, it solidifies and your reactor is ruined. The Soviets had such heating systems on the docks their nuclear subs used but they required a lot of maintenance beyond just the maintenance required for the sub. Refueling was much harder to accomplish too. Eventually the Soviets gave up and like the US Navy used only pressurized water reactors.

I think the original attraction of Rolex watches was their accuracy and extreme durability. If you are a navigator or an aviator, you require an accurate time piece (anyone who has done celestial navigation knows what I mean ) and one that can stand up to shock, immersion in water and wild variations in temperature. Fifty or eighty years ago flying and sailing ships was a lot more physical than today so a rugged accurate time piece was desirable. Today they have become more of a fashion statement. If you look at the history of the Mercedes Gelandewagen, designed originally for Iran's Army but now a megabuck boulevard cruiser for the rich and famous, you see the same sort of evolution.

Hyundai Engineering & Construction built it. The German TUV withdrew its safety certification earlier this year when the axle of the wheel was surrounded by scaffolding. Now it is apparently an expensive light show like Pyongyang's Ryugyong Hotel.

as a non American - what do you see as a positive thing happening right now in the USA? What’s going well and better than ever before under Democrats

Record employment measured in absolute numbers of Americans with a job for one. An amazingly low 3.5% unemployment rate for another. The labor force participation rate has risen to 62.6%, up from 60% when Mr. Biden took office. We are rapidly building a domestic supply chain for Li batteries. Those are just off the top of my head.

I have mixed feelings. Free market economists have been advocating congestion pricing for over four decades that I am aware of, having first heard about it in 1979 or 1980. The idea is that road space is a scarce commodity so allocate it to the highest valued users though price. When demand is greatest, set the price higher. When demand is lower, set the price lower. Set prices high enough to greatly reduce or eliminate congestion because those who do not absolutely need to drive into the city will use other forms of transportation. That at least is how economists pitch the idea, and it is emphatically not a new one. It is neither liberal nor conservative. Economists like to use price to allocate scarce goods or services. It is seen by economists as being more efficient than any other means. I recall Singapore was using congestion pricing in the late 1980s. Every car had a transponder and sensors in the city recorded your passage and generated your monthly bill. It's a tool available to reduce congestion and based on the experience in Singapore it achieves the desired results.

Having said that I don't want a transponder in my car, don't want a government agency or insurance companies tracking my driving. Just don't want it. It's why I don't have a transponder to use toll lanes on freeways in our state. With that in mind I don't know what the answer is to reduce congestion that doesn't offend some sensibilities regarding privacy. It might be a good trade off for some but not for me.

And make sure they have the biggest and baddest LRADs and LRAD protection while they are at it.

I was thinking more along the lines of some remotely operated water guns spraying something that is more slippery than oil and smells really bad (:

That is Late Stage Capitalism and all to evident in this economic news.

A full frontal display of a lack of any formal training in economics. What you see is a symptom of a lack of competition, oligopoly and sometimes monopoly. It has nothing at all to do with "late stage capitalism". The US and other industrial democracies generally have anti trust laws designed to prevent the accumulation of market power in too few sellers but too often they fail to enforce these rules. In the US it is compounded by a court system that seems to side with producers and against enforcing anti-trust laws. It is a problem that can occur in any stage of development if one or two big companies are allowed to capture a market. The EU which is arguably in a later stage of development than the US does what most economists consider to be a better job of enforcing competition.

But even the visas can be a hassle. “We need them around April,’’ Letourneau said. “We don’t get them until June, July. One year we didn’t get them until October ... I wish I had an answer on the labor market.’’

Offering more pay and better benefits usually does the trick. I get tired of listening to cheapskate employers whine about not being able to find enough workers to fill the jobs they have.

GBR48, you are referring to a US Supreme Court Decision South Dakota v. Wayfair that states can mandate that businesses without a physical presence in a state with more than 200 transactions or $100,000 in-state sales collect and remit sales taxes on transactions in the state. This decision overturned the Court’s 1992 decision in Quill v. North Dakota and 1967 decision in National Bellas Hess.02 The decision expanded states’ abilities to collect sales taxes from e-commerce and other remote transactions.4 Most states have adopted new rules defining what establishes a sales and use tax obligation, known as nexus.3 The decision made the out-of-state vendor provisions of Act 134 of 2016 effective, and certain out-of-state vendors are required to register with the State of Vermont and collect and remit sales tax beginning July 1, 2018.

Let's just say this change in the law has had minimal to no effect on internet sales and there is no way you can stretch this to claim it is "suppressing online activity". In fact your claim is laughable. Merchants big and small apply sales taxes to my purchases as a matter of routine. There is software that calculates this automatically for the merchant and tracks what state gets what at the end of the reporting period. This has been the case since 2018. Your claim is overwrought and laughable.

I think Philippines and Japan should collaborate on designing and building heavily reinforced coast guard patrol ships designed to withstand shouldering and ramming.

They might also wish to collaborate on another class of patrol ship with high speed that can out run and out maneuver Chinese ships. It might be a wave piercing tri hull like the big auto and passenger ferries Austal builds for Fred Olsen Lines (ex: Benchijigua Express shown below) or maybe a surface effect ship along the lines of an enlarged version of Norways Skjold class patrol ships.

https://imgs.search.brave.com/XU1i-RBeKkVTdo8S5Sa6Mn-TJkog5Q5FV84N8PNWe2A/rs:fit:860:0:0/g:ce/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWcu/bmF1dGljZXhwby5k/ZS9wZGYvcmVwb3Np/dG9yeV9uZS8yODAz/OS9iZW5jaGlqaWd1/YS1leHByZXNzLTM3/MTQzXzFtZy5qcGc

https://imgs.search.brave.com/twgZKH9ohFDi7Hor8dtBdzUXoI4QJcn8Iu0OycB45rc/rs:fit:860:0:0/g:ce/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cu/ZGVmZW5jZXRhbGsu/Y29tL3dwLWNvbnRl/bnQvdXBsb2Fkcy8y/MDE2LzAxL1Nram9s/ZC1jbGFzcy1mYXN0/LW1pc3NpbGUtY29y/dmV0dGUuanBn

The CCP have carried out some truly deplorable acts here, like releasing flood water into very vunerable areas to relieve the flooding in Beijing, 

A touch of exaggeration here. Everyone knows I am no fan of the CCP but dam operators have to release water to prevent the dam from over topping, which almost always leads to complete failure of the dam. US dam operators have had to make identical decisions during weather extremes. We have seen examples in the US of dam operators having to conduct an emergency release of water, causing downstream flooding when sinkholes erupted on dams threatening the collapse of the dam. How about all the flooding downstream of Oroville Dam when they had a spillway problem a few years ago? Never a good thing for a dam operator to be caught out by extreme weather and have no place to store flood waters but it happens.

God knows why anybody in Japan would need a vehicle like this!

The market for this isn't Japan. They will sell boatloads in Australia, the US and Africa. A restored FJ44 in the US fetches over $100,000 . When I lived briefly in Australia all four wheel drive vehicles were called "Land Cruisers", even Jeeps and Nissan Patrols.

It looks like he's wearing maternity clothes /:

Obtw, the Commander and Deputy Commander of the PLA Rocket Forces, General Li Yuchao and General Liu Guangbin respectively, have also just been replaced. The stated offense is corruption. With the the expansion of their ICBM force and the many high value contracts involved it would not surprise anyone to discover high ranking officials receiving a red envelope from time to time.

So the rumor coming out of China now is that Qin was having an affair of some sort.

Just one example of the North American battery supply chain:

https://www.mining-technology.com/projects/mountain-pass-rare-earth-mine-modernisation-project-california/

https://mpmaterials.com/what-we-do/

Except for those pesky emissions from 500,000 lbs of mining for one battery, shipping it to China, manufacturing it using coal and oil, shipping it again for assembly in plants using coal, gas and oil, shipping the finished car on trucks using diesel, etc.

For the North American market the mining and processing of battery materials is going to happen in North America. The supply chain and necessary factories are being built now. Toyota and others are building battery plants in the US. The US and Canada have an abundant supply of the necessary minerals.