No, no, no. First swallowed polonium-210 accidentally, then shot self and fell out a window as the plane exploded midair.

This "implosion" is by design in the Chinese model. The PRC's top objective is to quickly catch up, and in an era where capital was cheap, they essentially decided they would risk overcapacity and waste to beat the West. The central government points at a market they want to enter, incentivizing local and regional governments and private capital to aggressively enter those markets. The government essentially hosts a cutthroat (even by Western standards) capitalist "gladiatorial games" to forge a couple of competitive, tested national champions that the national government would then protect and promote overseas. Again, its wasteful, not even China didn't need 300+ EV companies, and the Chinese government is seeking ways to reduce the amount of waste. The national government realizes that there is debt risk for state and local governments with a lot of this waste, and I'm not sure they can keep doing it in the long run. Yet in the end, the priority remains catch up and take over the market, so they will tolerate some level of waste to take over the global EV market. Same playbook we've seen for solar panels, drones, electronic components, bicycle rentals, etc.

Problem is no merchant wants to be the first (and possibly only) one that integrates taxes, giving the perception that their prices are higher than their competitors. Even if they put in fine print that prices include taxes, people can't easily compare prices on the fly against competitors who don't (or straight up miss the fine print and just dismiss them as more expensive). I think your latter suggestion, that they make weird prices that round perfectly, is the more likely route unless a government entity forces them to do so.

I suspect in the end, more merchants will adopt the "cash discount" approach, charging a flat percentage to all customers who use credit cards rather than rejecting cards. For high rate cards, this will make the merchants whole. If customers are using a low fee credit card, merchants will just pocket the difference. Keep it simple (and pocket a few extra bucks).

You don't even need outside players - most automotive OEM's currently selling within the US are using Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. It will once again be a test to see if people are willing to forgo GM due to this. That said, GM may be feeling encouraged by new car firms like Tesla and Rivian who are having success despite ignoring both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.. though GM may be overestimating their software talents.

I like to say that AI is like a friend who doesn't know anything about the issues that just happens to read a set of random news articles over the last six months and tries his best to regurgitate what he heard in an authoritative tone. They don't understand context, timelines, etc. Just that it sounds kind of right.

Even if you forced everyone to the polls, people would still be voting based on emotional appeals, "gut" reactions, and negative emotions. It's just that those who were too lazy to act on those emotions are now being forced to act on them in the polls.

If you have a washing machine at home and the hookup for a toilet, cloth diapers are not that much more difficult than disposables. Both my kids used cloth with little issue. Solids can be easily washed off. If we still had affordable services to launder diapers, even better. I would still use disposables during travel when washing services aren't convenient or available. That said, there is the interesting question of balance - which is "worse" for the environment, the solid waste from disposable diapers versus the increased water usage for cloth diapers?

"Life, uh, finds a way."

Lower classes also have their own culture and system of social niceties: think about all the ways of showing respect, disrespect, social cues, unspoken expectations, etc. These social niceties are an intrinsic part of communication in the human species. I think what you're referring to is that upper classes have intentionally created a separate system that they use to identify and block out the lower classes.

I can't wait until law enforcement and intelligence agencies across the globe start knocking to buy, or legally "compel" Neon to hand over all that data. The content alone is worth a lot, but then to train their own tools to mimic voices of individuals? Such a massive treasure trove of now publicly available data that falls into the "What could possibly go wrong?" category.

A lot of this is just the standard translator's dilemma - while you can technically find words that translate near directly from one language to another, unless you understand the culture behind the language, you're not necessarily communicating. Just look at an Internet forum like Reddit. There are written social cues and inside jokes in various subreddits that if you're not familiar with can be confusing. You see that confusion even further in broader forums where broader segments of society or different nationalities may mix and people are constantly missing cues (sarcasm, jokes, joy, frustration, etc.). Trying to straight translate languages is a lot lot like that but even more complicated since the cultural differences are even greater. I think for a lot of English-as-a-first-language speakers on the Internet, they don't fully appreciate how much Anglo-Commonwealth-American culture English as a second language had to absorb to even participate in English language forums. Mind you, it's easier for them since Anglo-Commonwealth-American culture is globally dominant, but it's still a lot of effort.

I don't think people appreciate that this is the normal cycle of the Chinese tech innovation ecosystem, and one that supports the Chinese government's goal of rapidly creating a world class capability at any expense. If you think of the classic program triangle of cost, schedule, and capability, they sacrifice cost to accelerate schedule and capability. It is actually a very effective system for achieving their goals, taking the best of competitive markets but with strong state supervision and macro capital inefficiency.

This is how the cycle goes. The central government gives direction on broad technologies and industries it wants to promote. Local and regional government investment funds and private capital flood the market to support dozens if not hundreds of startups not just to make money but to demonstrate commitment to the central government's vision. You create a hyper-cutthroat market (described by one scholar as a massive gladiatorial game) with rapid advancement and tremendous innovation albeit at a cost of substantial waste in terms of capital wasted on unprofitable, excess capacity that the domestic economy can absorb. These firms then flood the global market at cut-rate prices to try and survive but bankrupting all non-Chinese firms on the market in the process, leaving China dominant in the market. In the meanwhile, you get to a point where inevitably, most of those firms go bankrupt or consolidate into a few winners which the government puts into a "gilded cage." These firms are national champions promoted and protected by the central government in exchange for supporting government priorities and initiatives.

We've seen this in multiple markets, from microelectronics to e-VTOL to drones and now EV's. With EV's, China had at one point over 200 brands fighting tooth and nail. In the end, only a few will survive, but they will be much stronger with tremendous scale. That's what we're seeing now is the inevitable culling down to a few national champions like BYD.

But do we even have "water cooler" moments anymore since so many people are now working from home?

There is an incorrect assumption that a space program isn't an inherently military endeavor. Space has been militarized from day 1 when Sputnik went online, and both China and the United States see it as an inevitable battlefield and are actively preparing for a conflict there. Government space programs inherently have a military aspect, and nearly every commercial space firm is actively involved in military space applications. The "New Space" firms in all countries are no exception.