I've never understood why ANYONE would rely on "influencers." OMG. Has everyone abdicated doing their own thinking? Do people need to be told what to believe? Or is this just a new religion?

The concept of "influencers" is almost as stupid as "ripped jeans." What's the point of that? Paying extra to buy clothing that is pre-damaged? Does wearing ripped jeans mean that they're trying to express solidarity with poor people? Why pay $200 for pre-damaged clothing when you could just buy lunch for that guy sitting on the ground outside the 7-11?

Why is there a women's division at all?

Hmpfff... I've been saying that Fusion energy was only 10 years away since I graduated college in 1975. Only one of us can be right about this.

My current desktop box is one I built in 2012. 8 core CPU, 32 G system memory, SSD boot drive, spinning drives for home directory and backups. I run Ubuntu. I started out on 12.04, then 14.04, 16.04 and now 22.04. I upgraded the video board and power supply about 6 years ago, and that board was 3 years old at the time. The boot drive fried on me a couple months ago and I rebuilt using a new 256G SSD.

The other machine I once had that ran forever was a Sun Sparc 2, that I finally retired in 2004, when it was 12 years old. It was still running fine, but I got tired of maintaining my own DNS and Sendmail server, so out it went.

Governments are not in the business of food production. Food companies are. And if one guy can figure out how to make a new product that is lower cost than the other guy and make a profit at it, then he's going to make A LOT of money. There's your incentive.

Two decades is a loooong time in the world of technological development. Think about what things were like just two decades ago.

- no cell phones

- TVs were still mostly CRT

- hybrid vehicles were brand new

- Spinning Drive sizes were measured in GB, not TB

- SSD sizes were measured in MB, not TB

If you want lab grown meat to take over from traditional meat products, you have to make it at least as good and cheaper. It's the same with electric vehicles. When they become lower cost than ICE vehicles (and they will), people will buy them.

It doesn't matter if the food product is lab grown, plant based or whatever. If it tastes good AND costs less, people will buy it. Trying to pitch any of these products as a boutique item just won't sell.

Hamburger doesn't look like a cow. You buy it because you like eating burgers. Offer lab meat that looks like, tastes like the real thing AND costs less, and that will be the end of the cattle industry.

I was inspired to ask ChatGPT to write this dialog because a friend does great impressions of all three characters. I've always wanted to see him do an impression of a 3-way conversation between Yoda, Gollum and Dobby.

I asked ChatGPT to write a humorous 3-way dialog between Yoda, Gollum and Dobby the house elf.

.

Dobby: Master, Dobby has come to serve you!

Gollum: Serve us, serve us, my precious!

Yoda: Serve you, Dobby should not. Balance, there must be.

Dobby: But Master, it is Dobby's job to serve!

Gollum: Serve us, serve us! We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious.

Yoda: Precious, hmm? Only lead to suffering, it does.

Dobby: Dobby does not understand, Master Yoda.

Gollum: Understands nothing, does it? Stupid elf.

Yoda: Angry, Gollum is. Fear and suffering, he carries.

Dobby: Oh dear, Master Gollum seems upset. Can Dobby get you anything? A nice fish perhaps?

Gollum: Fish! Give us the fish!

Yoda: Patience, Gollum. Patience is key.

Gollum: Patience, yes. We must have patience. But the fish, the fish! Cannot wait for the fish.

Dobby: Very well, Master Gollum. Dobby will go catch you a fish.

Yoda: No, Dobby. Fish for Gollum, catch not. Enough suffering, there has been.

Gollum: No fish! No fish! The elf tricked us!

Dobby: Oh no, Master Gollum! Dobby would never trick you. Perhaps some hobbit bread instead?

Yoda: Peace, there is. Sharing, there should be.

Gollum: Sharing! Yes, the precious can be shared. But the fish, the fish! That is ours, all ours.

Dobby: Oh dear, it seems we have a misunderstanding. Dobby is sorry.

Yoda: Apologize, not necessary. Learn, we all must.

Gollum: Yes, learn. But the fish, the fish! We wants it, we needs it.

Yoda: Enough, Gollum. Enough of the fish.

Gollum: But the fish!

Yoda: Control, Gollum. Control your obsession.

Gollum: Control, yes. We must have control. The precious, it is ours.

Dobby: Dobby is so sorry for the trouble, Masters. Dobby will leave now and let you two wise beings continue your discussion.

Yoda: Go in peace, Dobby. And remember, serve not for reward. Serve for the greater good.

Dobby: Thank you, Master Yoda. Dobby will remember.

Gollum: The fish, the fish! We must have it!

Yoda: Control, Gollum. Control.

We had a couple of Lisa machines when I worked at Wells Fargo in 1986. Very nice drawing package. Frankly, the most intuitive I've ever seen. If someone were to port this to run under a VM, I'd run it today just for the drawing package.

The NeXT windowing system is what the current Mac OS windowing system came out of. The Windowmaker windowing system is a clone of the NeXT and is fast and light. I've been using it on various platforms since 1999. I run it on all my machines. Still available on all the Debian derivatives. Easy to customize and configure. Far faster than anything else you've seen. I won't use anything else.

You write:

"At this point I think the biggest issues with batteries are not so much cost as the time to charge and the loss of capacity in cold climates. The fact that it takes 30 minutes to charge you car even at a high speed charger limits EV use for long distance trips and the reduction in capacity plus the need to use heaters in cold climates limits adoption there too.

Yes, hopefully they will address these limitations with future battery technology and, if they do, EVs will become immensely popular but until then EV adoption is going to be limited."

I agree. The best use case is when you can charge at home, but many people can't do that. Even better when you live in a temperate climate. I live on Hawaii Island and recently purchased an EV with a quoted range of 310 miles. Of course that's all dependent upon how you drive. I get about 4.1 miles/kwh and with the 77.4 kwh battery my car has, that's close enough. The point for me was to have a car that would enable me to drive anywhere on the island and back on a single charge, so that I'd never have to deal with public chargers, which I find to be much less than 100% reliable.

I drive an EV simply because I like to and feel it's actually a good value. Regen braking is a better benefit than you realize. When you drive across the island, it's basically all uphill until you reach the middle of the island, and then downhill the rest of the way to the other side. Rolling downhill for 40 miles or so is hard on mechanical brakes, but with regen braking, not only is the no wear on the mechanical brakes, you're actually putting energy back into the battery. I just think that's kind of cool.

You write: "So what you're saying is that there's an increase in heat energy, which we commonly call warming, and it's affecting the entire globe, which we call global, and therefore global warming is a bad name?" The term "global warming" suggests to many people just a rise in the temperature they experience. We hear about the planet's temperature as being 2 degrees warmer, so many people think that it just means that the weather will be just that, 2 degrees warmer, and not consider that there is much more to climate change than that. It's a reasonable term, but many won't see it in anything more than a summer day that's a little warmer. That's why I prefer to talk about the planet's weather as a system to which energy has been added, thus resulting in more energetic weather events.

I'm a great believer in the free market. I recommend that you simply google the words: "oil company federal subsidies"

The subsidies that the oil industry gets far, far exceeds anything going to the EV car industry. It's not even close.

I do believe there's a substantial benefit to moving to a carbon free future. People have it all wrong with the phrase "global warming." The planet's weather is a system, and human activity adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, has added a significant amount of energy to the weather system. More energy means more energetic weather - deeper winters, heat waves, storms and droughts. All of this is causing enormous damage and is far more costly than any subsidies the EV industry is getting.

40 years ago, Exxon predicted the very climate change we are experiencing now. This is nothing new. It was demonstrated more than 100 years ago that CO2 was a greenhouse gas.

The impact of climate change will be much, much more than just more storms and storm damage. It will impact the ability to grow food and feed the world's population. If you think the migration from Latin America is a problem today, you're in for a very rude shock. We ain't seen nuthin' yet and it won't be just from Latin America. Bangladesh has nearly 100 million people and 35 million them live at 6 feet above sea level or less. What do you think is going to happen there? Have you seen the flooding in Pakistan?

With all the wars that happen today, we are seeing millions of refugees around the planet. With climate change, we're going to see 100 million food refugees and more. There are excellent reasons to do everything possible to a carbon neutral and even negative future.

But back to the EV vs. ICE issue. EV battery tech is developing at an enormous pace and by the end of the decade, will be half the cost it is today. EV cars will cost less than ICE cars to begin with and electrical power will cost less than gasoline. Beyond that, the near complete lack of maintenance for an EV will prove to be a deal breaker over ICE cars. And don't forget that because EVs mostly use regenerative braking, your brakes last at least twice as long. And while we're at it, you're going to find that people will LIKE an EV car more because they're so quiet, smooth and comfortable to ride in. No catalytic converter for people to steal either.

By the end of the decade EVs will outsell ICE cars because they will just cost less. Were you to remove all subsidies for EV cars, battery manufacture and the oil industry, it would only hasten the change.

People vote their wallets. Simple as that. It's a free country and you're free to operate a car that has 10 times the cost of maintenance and is far more complex to build. The more moving parts you have, the more moving parts that break.