Strategic investments, like in educating kids? That have positive effect over their whole 45 year work life? Naa, we do not do that. We must make money NOW!
Why educate kids? We don't need them to be intelligent. We have artificial intelligence now!
Incidentally, the only recorded event (that I know of) of a wealthy country attempting to convert to communism was Czechoslovakia, and it didn't produce the expected utopia. It just lead them straight into poverty.
I'm no history expert, but it's hard to draw conclusions from that. The country was shattered by war. The whole of Europe surrounding Czechoslovakia was shattered by war. Then the Soviets took over and tried to control things from Moscow. So we can't really just blame "communism" for the poverty.
Having just done some travel in the region, I'm a big fan of places that used to be communist. They tend to have good public housing, good public transport and good public infrastructure in general. Parks, kids' playgrounds, stuff like that. If only there was a way to get the nice public infrastructure and skip the authoritarian oppression. The Nordic countries seem to be doing a pretty good job.
From your link, the dash doesn't look too bad. There's still too much "screen" for a grumpy old man like me but it's much, much better than a Tesla, or any of the Chinese EVs I've been in recently (I'm presently in
And before you think I'm a total luddite, I do actually like heated seats.... and ventilated seats on a hot day. And I like power mirrors,, so you don't have to reach out into the weather to adjust the door mirrors, but of course if you don't share the car with someone else you basically never have to do this.
I haven't been in one of the new ones, but I own two Bolts (2020 and 2021) and my dad has a 2023 Bolt EUV. They don't have "dumb buttons for hot, cold, and fan", they have a thermostat where you set the desired temperature and then it controls the heat based on that. The computer makes some counter intuitive choices at times, turning on the AC when it's already cold or the heat when it's hot. You can override it, but it's not the direct dumb buttons and knobs my older cars had where you directly controlled the air flow with mechanical levers.
Still great cars for not too much money.
Thanks for the info. I've seen the same issue with some euro ICE cars. As long as it can be over-ridden, it's not the end of the world. Though I do get grumpy when I get into a hot car on a sunny day and the climate control turns all the fans to 100%, blowing a hurricane of hot air before the AC has had a chance to get to cool down enough to be useful.
Chevy has reintroduced the Bolt at around $30k MSRP. Four doors, two rows of seating, some bells and whistles (powered windows), 230-250 miles of range.
That's good news, I hadn't seen that info. Thanks.
Was it one of the Mazda-based models? They were built by Ford, but not with Ford technology.
Ford honestly has had the occasional hit, but also oh so many lemons.
I'm not the OP, but I loved the Ford-badged Mazdas. I'm still driving an AWD Familia GTX with a Ford body and badge on it. 330 000 km and still going strong.
Called it. Buy a sedan then.
Is there barebones electric sedan for sale in the USA? I'm completely fine with hand-cranked windows, and I'd rather have a couple of analog gauges than a giant tablet in the dash. I don't need climate control, just a couple of dumb buttons for hot, cold and fan.
My heart breaks for those poor unfortunate rich folk that couldn't go skying. So sad. Guess they'll have to private jet to some other location.
I have zero sympathy for those assholes. But anyone west of the continental divide is going to be in trouble if they need decent amounts of water this summer. That snowpack is vital to fill the Colorado River. It will also have an effect on the availability of hydroelectricity.
Heat stroke is easy to solve - air conditioning. Almost everyone in America has it, why doesn't Europe? Was it just not needed before?
Not sure if joking... no, it wasn't needed before. Temperature records are being set across Europe. The hot periods are also more frequent and of longer duration. So while they can tolerate one hot day by staying indoors, if there are several hot days in a row with warm nights in between, there is no time to recover, or air out the stuffy buildings in the cool night hours.
Yes, air conditioning exists, but it needs power from somewhere. The biggest nuclear plant in Europe is shut down right now (war) and the some of the French power plants are throttling their output due to the heatwave. https://www.reuters.com/busine...
Further west, Vail just had their worst ski season since records began. https://www.vaildaily.com/news...
... other than slashdot of course. Heard YouTube is good.
Last time I checked, Youtube was a video site. For "reading" try Wikipedia. It ain't perfect but it's more informative than Youtube, which seems to be 99% attention whores, AI slop, and outright lies.
one of my colleagues got an intriguing system a few weeks ago: Portable air-conditioning. Except without the downside of portable air-conditioning, the units are small and take waste heat and dump it into the radiator lines (there's a quick release coupling next to the radiators in the room). By dumping heat into his water heating circuit his air-water heatpump can pipe it outdoors. Keeps his rooms at 21C without any condensation buildup on the the radiator circuit.
Sounds interesting. Do you have some keywords I could search to get some more info?
Houses here are made of bricks and mortar, not wood and plasterboard. Drilling a hole in an exterior wall is not as easy as you may think.
Every time I see news footage of buildings damaged in Ukraine, I see plenty of heat exchangers on the walls. These tend to be either old stone buildings from hundreds of years ago, or old soviet buildings made of concrete panels. Either way, not trivial to drill holes through. Even before the invasion, Ukraine was not particularly wealthy. On top of that, the climate is much more extreme than the UK. So why does such a country do a better job of heating/cooling than the UK?
I've been to the UK. I have no idea why they persist in such inefficient, uncomfortable buildings. Is it some kind of "stiff upper lip" or national pride issue? Are their regulators really *that* bad? Is there a NIMBY problem?
So,
A. There is an opportunity for profits!
B. So why hasn't anyone taken advantage of it yet? This isn't a new issue, it's only more pressing. Are there regulations in place that prevent it? Is there a cultural bias that discourages AC? Why isn't someone making a fortune fixing this problem yet?
Aldi (a German company) frequently has sales on portable AC units here in
Or the ones that mount to the wall and connect through to an external radiator. More expensive than a window unit, needs professional installation, but more efficient and no concerns about window design.
Here in
For the temperate climate where I live, they are great. In summer the A/C at noon is basically free thanks to widespread solar. We do get a freezing temperatures in winter and the heating copes with that just fine. Most hot water here is on a separate circuit though, which reduces complication.
Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer.
