Indeed. Not only has Trump been playing chicken (and chickening out) on tariffs, but his reneging on the deal with he struck Canada and Mexico in his last term and his statements about not honouring the commitments America has to NATO have underscored the fact the any deal he is willing to strike is not worth the paper that its written on. American industry will suffer badly as a result. Why would you want to predicate any major, long term projects on a suppliers who might suddenly be involved in a trade war or change their alliances with your enemies? Trump said he wanted to reshape global trade, and he will. The problem for him (and the people of the US) is that America will loose out when everyone else is striking deals without them (and sticking to them).

Aside from the regularly cited (and very real) bloat in administration in education, there's another important factor driving up education costs: productivity gains in areas like manufacturing and technology tend to drive up prices in services sectors like education and healthcare. When productivity rises in some parts of the economy wages ultimately end up rising across the board, but for sectors (particularly in services) where productivity can't rise as fast, those wage increases turn into real value price increases for those services. A hairdresser can't increase the rate of delivering hair cuts the same way that car makers or electronic gadget makers have increased their productivity, and the same goes for the productivity of teachers (or nurses, or firefighters). So even without the bureaucratic overload of extra administrators, the price of education would be rising compared to the price of "stuff".

One sliver of hope is that recent advances in AI might offer a way to increase productivity in education. If we can do that then's a chance to reverse some of these rises, especially if we can get rid of some of the administrators!

One.

The dry weight of a Lucid Air Grand Touring is 2,360 kg. Add a couple of occupants at 80kg each then you're lifting 2,520kg up 1,300 meters. Gravitational potential energy e = ghm = 9.81 * 1300 * 2520 which comes out to just over 32.15 megajoules and very close to 9KWh. This is the baseline energy that is gained coming down hill and used going up hill. If we assume that the efficiency of the regeneration and the utilisation are about the same then you're going to gain less than this going down and use more than this going up, but the net difference is still going to be about 18KWh.

The nominal battery capacity of the Air Grand Touring is 112KWh, with the usable capacity probably several percent less, so you'll need about a 20% to 25% charge en route going back up the hill. Even if it's twice that, I don't think you're going to need to stop more than once.

And don't even get me started on the progress bars on the Microsoft EV chargers...

While I am no fan of the largest shareholder, if they are in a rural area and already paying $90/month for terrible internet, Starlink would be worth a look, especially if they are on a large plot with unobstructed views of the sky. If 'Residential Lite' is available in their area it would actually be lass than what they are paying now and still delivers 50MBs most of the time.

Dude, Jim and Mickey made him swear he's never blab, so he's not going to name any names. Oh, crap, forget I said that.

America has vast industries that can apply research too, and they're very good at it. The idea that US manufacturing production is in decline is a total myth. US manufacturing output has been trending consistently upwards (with the exception of 2020) for decades. It has declined as a fraction of GDP, but it has still grown in real terms. The reason that so many people think that it has declined (aside from propaganda from populist politicians telling them so) is that manufacturing productivity has been growing even faster, so US manufacturers are building more high value products with fewer people.

Now, if you want to stop the US from continuing to increase the value of the products it produces then a good way to do that would be to stop investing in long term primary research. Less new technology in your products will mean that they won't offer new value propositions. Is that really what you want?

Scientific innovation in the USA since 1950 has been primarily driven by the long term investments made by successive governments (on both sides of the aisle) in primary research. The short term investment strategies that drive Wall Street don't allow for companies to make long term plays that will benefit the whole of America, rather than this quarter's investors. As such it seems highly unlikely that "the market" is going to take up the slack in primary research investment. American innovation is going to suffer, and America will suffer in the long run. Meanwhile China is investing in primary research like America did in the 1960s. What a way to Make America Irrelevant Again.

There are lots of vineyards in British Columbia, especially in the Okanagan Valley, and some of them are really quite good. The difference will be that by then they will be growing cabernet, zinfandel and tempranillo instead of pinot noir and riesling.

While I don't dispute the numbers, it would be interesting to see the comparison not to all drivers but to a cohort of humans that drive the same sort of routes with the same sort of regularity, which would be drivers for Uber, Lyft and other ride-share services. I don't know if those drivers have higher rates of pedestrian and cyclists collisions (because they spend their lives driving urban streets) or lower rates (because they know the streets and intersections better). Either way a more focused comparison would be informative.

While I agree with the principle of this, the rate is clearly excessive. The current Federal gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon, so the rate that they are proposing is the equivalent of 1,087 gallons per year. The average new cars efficiency in the USA is about 28.5 mpg, so this is a flat tax that taxes people as if they drive nearly 29,000 miles per year. In fact the average American driver goes just short of 13,500 miles per year. Furthermore EVs generally are driven fewer miles per year (since many families with two cars will use their ICE car for longer trips due to range anxiety), and internet numbers (your milage may vary) suggest that EVs average around 11,000 miles per year. So this is a flat tax, without regard for individual road usage (and resulting wear), that hits EVs users at more than 2.5 times the rate that the Federal gas tax hits the average gasoline car user.

Notwithstanding the contrary evidence from the tariffs, I believe that some people in the current administration are capable of doing math. As a result I think that it's fair to conclude that this is not just an attempt to make EV owners pay their share but is in fact a punitive attack on cleaner vehicles that don't buy their energy from Trumps donors.

I appreciate that disparaging news sources that don't align with the MAGA narrative is part of the MAGA playbook, but has it ever occurred to you to look into articles that go against what you expect, rather than just writing them off? Irrespective of if you disagree with their editorial leaning, the BBC is generally an excellent source of facts because they name their sources. With only 60 seconds and a search engine you can track down the US DHS web page that is shown and do a reverse search of the image to see that it was indeed originally posted by the account of a Nottingham, UK, based tattoo artist. Maybe that's all too much work for you, and just slagging off news sources that don't repeat that sounds of your echo chamber is much easier, but if you try it you might learn something in the process.

Along side the sales tax that's not in the list price, the royalty recovery fee added to your streaming subscription, the airport concession fee on your car rental, the mysterious destination fee on your hotel booking, the mandatory 25% tip at the restaurant and all the other hidden fees that corporations love and consumers hate, I think it's pretty clear that we will soon be seeing these tariffs being passed on to the customer. Anyone who thought that this administration was going to reduce inflation was sorely delusional.

They only need to show harm if they want damages. If they are just seeking an injunction to demand that the OPM follow the law (which clearly states that a privacy impact assessment is required) then they just have to show that the law was not followed.

The solution is pretty easy: the OPM could do a PIA. The problem is that this is likely being put in place to spot âoesubversiveâ civil servants who donâ(TM)t sufficiently by in to the new regimeâ(TM)s agenda, so a PIA (which would need to be published) would be damning.