I would not bet on that. In the 50, 60, 70s lots of small European makes managed to sell in the American market, it was not about scale because they were still only doing 3 and 4 digit volumes. If in an era before CAD they could come up with US spec bumpers, different intakes and PCV systems to meet US emissions rules that came on in in the late 60s; BYD can slap whatever Canada needs in terms of bumper height, rear camera, etc and crank out enough parts for CA spec versions of their existing models.

Carney sold you out! He needed to show he could do something about your economic dependence on the US and he chose the quick route of giving more influence to China rather then dealing with the inflationary consequences and political fall out of trying to find ways to make CA industry less vertical and more balanced. It feels good right now but this will prove to have been a big mistake a decade or so from now. When the 'great sucking sound' the American industry has heard over the last 30 years comes to CA.

I don't think it is that people go the ballot box wanting to 'vote for the winner' or 'support the under dog' etc.

It is more a function of if they vote at all. If you think your guy/gal does not stand a chance maybe you just stay home. Similarly if you think they got it in the bag maybe you don't bother to show up.

I doubt this is as impactful as it used to be though, given early voting and mail in voting. I still believe both of those things actually undermine the democratic process and encourage lazy voting a party line ticket, vs actually evaluating the candidates and possibly crossing the party line even occasionally; to say nothing of the doors they kick open to vote selling, vote swapping, domestic intimidation, and more.

The correct answer is to ignore this poly market bs, its just gambling and if it drives voter behavior shame on them. Make absentee ballots for people who truly cannot go to their polling place for serious health, or other irreconcilable conflicts (military deployment, etc). Make election day a federal holiday, take Columbus or Presidents day away to do it if you have to.

Vibe coding is just another RAD solution. There is nothing wrong with RAD, being able to try stuff out with minimal investment is fantastic.

The problem is now as it has always been when the RAD output is judged 'good enough' by someone not really equipped to make that judgement and shoved into some key business process where it does not really meet reliability, scale-ability, security, and other requirements in ways that might not be immediately apparent because the requirements gathering and design validation processes was shotcut.

Nothing about this is 'new' other than the name, having some LLM that does not really of C#/Java/etc for you isn't different than having some drag and drop designer generating a bunch of code for you - these things still don't have a full understanding what real needs are, they don't recognize corner cases, they don't know your safety, policy, regulatory, IP, etc concerns. They can't see the future like 'what if we have to hand this to 3rd party reseller', because they don't know the business.

Again these are not bad tools, vibe coding is not a bad idea, just sawsall isn't a bad tool, but it can become the problem when the goal morphs into let's make some fine furniture.

Anyone want to take bets on how long it takes their corporate masters to make them square their policy with their marketing efforts like stuffing co-pilot everywhere they can?

I honestly don't think Trump's policy has much to do with it at all. The big drop from 2005-20[12][1-4] has everything to do with around 1998 being when people started taking carbon reduction seriously. That period saw a lot of the low hanging fruit and low costs to address emissions sources handled. You continue to see improvements in the 2020-2024 range due to massive economic contraction related to covid policy.

Nobody wants to pollute, generally speaking more carbon emissions means more energy from non-free sources so there is still plenty of incentive to 'do better' maybe not as much as different policy choices would force but nobody is going to go tear out the new high efficiency windows and put their old single panes back, nor is anyone building something new going to chose poorly performing systems when better affordable alternatives exist.

Really the USA and the rest of the western world has been on a virtuous path since Kyoto as much as economics will allow anyway, industry is leading, public sentiment and desire to be green is leading, government policy has been basically irrelevant.

Trump has plenty of will to follow thru once Hegseth, Miller, or Rubio determine who/what they could drop a bomb on Trump will gleefully give the order to let fly.

The challenge for the war department right now is to support an urban uprising with an air/missile campaign.

That is about the dumbest thing I have read from you in a while, which is saying something. Not many player in the middle east want armed conflict with Iran happening or for Iran to slip into failed state status.

Not even Israel, Iran's mortal enemy want that. Even they are pumping the breaks. Why because that is a lot of weapons military hardware and bettered trained fighting men who would suddenly seeking power or simply selling the stuff to whoever to enrich themselves. It is mixture of Islamic zealots and secular figures and who could even guess which ones would prove more dangerous. The last thing the stable states in the region UAE, Saudis, Kuwait, Oman, Turky want is Iran turning into a Iraq, Syria like mess.

A lot of them would be happy to see the Islamic republic go to be replaced either by their own preferred branch of Islam or an orderly transition back to a secular kingdom, I suspect none of them would be thrilled to see it head in the direction of a real republican system though lest their own populations get ideas.

Domestically the LAST thing Trump is going to do is draft anyone to invade a foreign country. He likes missiles and bombs because domestically it makes America seem muscular to his base without him having to stand next to plane unloading the bodies of their children. Nope if Trump drafts anyone it will be to invade Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland, and perhaps NYC.

I did watch the video's all of them, including the mobile the agent had running. She created a dangerous situation, its unfortunate but he did what he had to do, and was right to do it.

Most folks in their 50s absolutely can still do it. At least they can if they have been doing it and are in shape from doing it.

However yeah if you're 47 year old desk jokey and you try some DIY project and put in a 8-9 hour day tiling on the weekend, you're damn right you'll be hurting.

The real problem is people in those trades need to be able to retire at 55-60, after which point yes the body really is spent from that kind of work over a lifetime. That is why pensions were a thing, but that does not work. The answer is self funded retirement like the white collar world. For that work though we need to pay them enough to do the work. 60k Inst that, They are never going to get paid like it is 1955 though either until we do something about immigration.

Which is of course is why everyone is so manic about ICE, for the last 40 years we have been fed the propoganda that immigration is inevitable. We have to accept mass migration, if not the store shelves will be empty, roofs wont get put on etc. It would be impossible to find and remove these people, no country will take them etc. If Trump/ICE really can remove them it will prove that no - its a choice, as a society we can chose keep America for own posterity, we can reject having a massive wealth gap and social stratification on the steroid of imported cheap labor.

Of course that upends progressives demographic agenda, of importing enough communists to win elections. So of course you're terrified Tom Homan can prove to everyone how the left for Ted Kennedy on has been lying and sabotaging the middle class, duping them into voting against their interests over and over again.

I don't think Microsoft talking about a kinder gentler kind of data-center is going to do much for public perception/opinion at this point.

I also really don't think forgoing tax abatement's is going to have much real impact either. The location of a lot of these new builds are being selected for cheap land values in States with utility regulation that operators can game to spread their infrastructure enhancement costs onto others. - Taxes generally speaking were not high in these locations in the first place.

As to water and what not hard see how they can negate the impact. Certainly they can limit it, but the idea they can put in more then what is being taken out, smells of greenwashing-acounting-trickery.

At any rate this dataceter thing is either going to blow over because the AI bubble pops, or it is going to become a political football because lots of folks are going to peeved. The GOP is going to have been problem squaring its nominally business friendly polices with Trumpian populism and affordability. The DNC is going to be in a similar boat when it comes to environmentalism, and a need to looks like the give a crap about jobs, growth, and global technical leadership.

All this has thus far allowed the big tech to waive money around the political animals of all stripes and get what they want so far, but these issues are coming to ahead with voters I think. Which will mean drawing some lines and putting various groups into boxes. Other than the usual bitterness and legal wrangling not sure where this going ultimately, but Microsoft and dataceneter develops are going to lose the control over the situation they currently enjoy. Which again does not mean they can't or won't get what they want just that larger economic/political attitudes will reduce their agency and the degree of determinism around if they can get a given project completed or not.

That would be *MEGA* in this case though right?

You just need someone external to push you.

You take grannies advice, go take a walk you lazy waste of space.

See the berating and insulting are actually important too. They drive off you apathy for anger just long enough to get you moving (the real cure). People are messed up today because everyone is always validating their feels. They need someone in their lives who will tell them, hey what your feeling is WRONG, now go 'sort yourself out'

let's be real. if you look at the polling both parties are in trouble. Voters rate each very poorly.

Turn out defines midterm elections. I would pretend to guess what will happen in November right now. If Trump or the GOP can animate their base somehow, they could hold or even pickup. If they do nothing they probably take a pounding.

If we're at war with Iran? -\_0_/-

If Spanburger or Mamdani do something that spooks people, Democrats might find any support beyond the just 40% of the population that hates Trump, evaporate; at least in the context of voters that turn out for midterms.

I don't care what side of American politics you're on if you think you know what will happen in November right now - you don't. We are in total coin toss territory here.

They would when the lender stops authorizing new charges. Which read their contract, they certainly can do.

Probably eventually, but in the shorter term we are talking about adding a lot new friction to the economy. ACH and debit would certainly replace a lot of the transaction processing but you'd be removing an easy source of credit from a population where there has been a near zero savings rate for decades.

Take the credit card away and you turn needing a new transmission into a lost job.