Many believe it's a reinforcement mechanism between flowering plants and insects. Once both plants and insects got into the symbiosis pattern, it flowered (pun half intended) as both sides gained a big advantage: one was able to disperse its DNA further, and the other got an easy meal.

Why nature didn't invent it earlier is hard to say. Maybe because most insects have crappy eyesight. One then happened to have good-enough eyesight that they could spot flowers at a distance, and evolution improved both bug eyes and flowers after that.

Ford made the Ford Ranger EV 1998 to 2002, then the Ford Focus Electric from 2011 to 2018 before switching to the Mach-E. They are not "new at it". They're just bad at it.

To be fair, I have a lot more hope for Ford than GM, as Farley seems to actually understand the critical importance of turning things around and the limited timeframes to do so, unlike GM, which still seems to only care about press.

Indeed! AI can certainly replace lousy human service because it's hard to suck more than the existing batch. Many service desks are just outsourced India call centers who service hundreds of companies, pretending to be dedicated, and know very little about each co's products; they just follow scripts. They are already de-facto bots.

AI is not near ready to replace competent experienced human service desks, but those are too rare anyhow, unfortunately.

They are new at it. You don't get great overnight.

"Women over 40 have the lowest birth rate" shouldn't come as a shock to anyone

Older does tend to mean wiser, after all. Well... okay, for some people.

Destroying middle class has predictable consequence of tanking birth rate. News at 11.

"We must have constant inflation or people might, you know, save!"

Then... basics cost (a lot) more and mid- to low-tier wages don't even come close to keeping up

Brutal housing, education, medical, food, vehicle, and fuel costs, crushing taxes on the lower tier workers... gee, sounds like a great circumstance to bring some ever-more-expensive rug rats into.

The "American Dream" is deader than Trump's diaper contents for a large swath of those of an age to be pumping out crotch goblins. But hey: The stock market is doing Great!

Or perhaps it's just that no one wants to hump someone with their pants falling off their butt — or otherwise dressing like a refugee.

Obligatory: get off my lawn.

Copper is not "the last mile". It's the last five meters. If that. When people talk about "the grid", they're not talking about the wiring in your walls. Which you don't have to redo anyway for adding an EV. Nobody has to touch, say, your kitchen wiring to add an EV charger.

"The grid" is the wiring leading up to your house. Those conductors are alumium, not copper. Occasionally the SER/SEU cable will occasionally be copper, but even that's generally alumium these days. And that's only to the service connection point (not even to the transformer - to the point of handoff between grid-owned and the homeowner-owned, generally right next to the house), e.g. after the service drop line with overhead service that descends down to the building. The "last mile" is absolutely not copper. Approximately zero percent of modern grid-owned wiring is copper, and even the short customer-owned connection from the drop line into the house is usually alumium.

Grids are not copper. Period. This isn't the year 1890 here.

And no, grid operators don't make money selling power. They make money providing the grid through which power is sold.

I have never seen a single utility that charges a flat grid access fee to residential consumers, anywhere on Earth.

Distinction can be hard to grasp for someone utterly ignorant on the subject

Says a guy who thinks that there's a mile of copper leading up to your house.

Taser company selling body cam transcribers? That's an easy task, most output will resemble "Oooww oouch stop zapping me! Aaaooow!..."

Reminds me of when I worked for an environmental cleanup company that was eventually bought out by a chemical company. The company was thus paid to clean up its own messes, via Fed Superfund money.

The grid is not made of copper. You thought it was? Copper is for home wiring, if that. Up to that point, it's alumium, bundled with steel on major lines for tensile strength. Does it look like copper to you?

As for the article: grid operators don't build out grids on a lark. They do it to sell power, because they make money selling power. If people want to buy more power because they want to charge an EV, then that's more money available for them. EVs are a boon to grid operators. They're almost an ideal load. Most charging done at night, steady loads, readily shiftable and curtailable with incentives, etc. Daytime / fast charging isn't, but that's a minority. And except in areas with a lot of hydro, most regions already have the ample nighttime generation capacity; it's just sitting idle, power potential unsold. In short, EVs can greatly improve their profitability. Which translates to any combiation of three things:

1) More profits
2) A better, more reliable grid
3) Lower rates

    * ... depending on the regulations and how competitive of an environment it is.

As for the above article: the study isn't wrong, it's just - beyond the above (huge) problem - it is based on stupid assumptions. Including that there's zero incentives made for people to load shift when their vehicles charge, zero battery buffering to shift loads, and zero change in the distribution of generation resources over the proposed timeframe. All three of these are dumb assumptions.

Also, presenting raw numbers always leads to misleading answers. Let me rephrase their numbers: the cost is $7 to $26 per person per year. The cost of 1 to 5 gallons of gas per year at California prices..

> sadness in the fact that they're launching it to an equatorial site, so we don't get to see the fascinating hydrocarbon seas

Why is that? Is it to simplify communications? The lakes would certainly be more interesting.

researchers have discovered the more memorable an image, the more likely a person is to think they have been looking at it for longer than they actually have.

Goatse is the secret to immortality!

Happens to me when I take off my undies.

Han shot first via his 3rd arm.

Boogeymen drive votes. (Boogypeople?)

I believe courts have interpreted it to mean people on US territories or citizens (even when abroad). Conservative courts have also assigned corporations and organizations many person-like legal qualities, which liberals often balk at because it gives them a potentially overly large voice on political issues traditionally considered only to be rights for individuals.