A lot of people in China do rent, I did, from people who have 'brought' a property and can then rent it. I looked seriously at 'buying' an apartment in China, but as you say it does feel a lot like renting and therefore felt like a bad investment.

My sense from living in China is not that people trust their government or they have been indoctrinated. They simple live in a situation where many things are out of their control and make the most of what they can control. Basically they know they are being short changed and are simply pragmatic about the situation.

While I can't completely agree about landlords I understand where you are coming from. Renting makes sense when you are young and starting out or only living in an area temporary, but it is sad to see buying has become so unaffordable that renting is now the only choice for many, driven in a large part by the large profits to be made from landlords with a large property portfolio. I have seen our government (New Zealand) try to address it by trying to make owning many properties hard to finance, but only with modest success. No quick fixes for that problem, but still not one to ignore.

Yeah, nah. You own land then you have costs and responsibilities, suck it up. But you can own you land, you can do what you like with it within reason, the government can't take it off you, with a few exceptions such as public works. You can pass it down from generation to generation. People in China get a pale imitation of that, they have their property only at the good graces of the government and whatever their grand plan is for the area they live in.

Ok, to be fair to your point it does sound like you are in the USA which is busy transforming it self away from the rights of the individual to the rights of corporations. In most other first world countries the Pfizer situation you describe would not be a problem as corporations don't get the same level of special treatment. Oh, and here (New Zealand) if you don't pay you car registration you get a debit that grows, but they will not come onto your property and take your car, they will simply send you endless demands for payment.

Just be clear 100% of the Chinese population are excluded from property ownership. All land belongs to the Chinese government. When you 'buy' an apartment it is only yours for a fixed number years, typically 30 to 40 years. Commercial properties are often less, around 20 years, but may be extended in some cases. To be fair urban hukou residency permits are a big issue and just one of several ways the Chinese government exert control over their population.

Looks like you got modded down for stating a valid question. I really can't workout why a single hour is such a problem for some people, I would think a normal healthy person should be able to completely adjust in a couple of days and for those couple of days should only be a minor effect. How do these people manage time zone changes when traveling?

Personally I find a 12hr change is pretty brutal for a day or two and 5hr can leave you tired for a day or two, but 1 hours is more like the difference between a workday and the weekend.

I normally agree with you on most things, but with this one the problem only a few of us are lucky enough to set our own schedule. Most people have their schedules set by their employers and schools.

However you are right when it comes to some business, like farmers, who complain about the issue when they should simply change their schedules to suit their needs.

I could understand this issue in the past but now we have smartphones and computers I find this argument lame. Just because the clock has changed that does not mean their schedule has to change. When DST changes they can simply change their schedule by the same amount so they are still doing things at the same time UTC and the cows will never know anything changed. This really only needs the farmers and milk collection trucks to all make the same schedule change.

Of course if they really want to make it easy for the cows, rather than for the farmer, they would not use absolute time but run a schedule based on sunrise. Again with smartphones and computers this is easy to do now.

Yes, the closer to the poles you are the more appealing the idea of more than 1 hour shift, or more 1 hour shifts, has some appeal. The 1 hour shift is a compromise to keep it simple. As you say, if you are really close to poles even the concept of a day is dubious.

Really the choice of using DST probably should be country or state choice with those near the equator not using it and others further away using it where it helps the quality of life. That only really make the question difficult for countries or states that span a significant range of latitude.

New Zealand is such a country, being much longer, north to south, than most people realise. Down south, closer to the Antarctic, DST has a meaningful impact. Up north, closer to the equator, it is still just outside the subtropical zone and DST still has value.

Looking at a global map Argentina and China are countries where it is going to be hard to get something they everybody will be happy with. China is a single timezone with no DST which from my time living there was kind of crazy. Being woken by bright sunlight at 5am in summer and going home from work in the dark in winter was really annoying.

This point really comes to mind when I hear the dairy industry complaining about milking cows in the morning.

Both the farmers waking in the morning for milking and trucks picking up milk will be using apps, so what is the big drama? If they agree the time should not change then they could simply change the wake up and pick up times by one hour when DST changes so they are actually the same time UTC. But if they really want make it easy for the cows they could set wake up and pick up times as offsets from sunrise. It would only take a few lines of code to make the apps work relative to sunrise.

I hadn't noticed that but it makes sense given the significant range of latitudes Australia covers.

Sounds like you have been blessed with near perfect kids so far if sleep changes for DST were "the absolute worst". When I look back on raising my kids there were many issues that came up, yet I have zero memories of DST being one of them.

If you live nearer the equator then daylight savings is a nuisance, however if you live nearer the poles then daylight savings is great. Hence the polarised view on the issue. Where I live there is nearly 6 hours more sun light in summer than in winter each day.

Any research like this is questionable if it doesn't account for latitude and the effect different latitudes have in the research results,

Sounds like the script from the classic War Games movie from 1983.

Depends on your use case but this time I would agree that range will be an issue for many classic motorcycle uses and charging time too slow. It is where BE motorcycles lag behind BE cars.

For commuting BE motorcycles have been up to the job for decades. For off road riding they are fine too in most cases but the range could be an issue on longer tail rides. My 2024 OSET TXP-24 got me a couple of hours riding on forestry tracks to the top of the local hills using only about a third of the charge, so covers my current needs ok. The small and easy to change of battery on the TXP range would make all day riding possible if a battery was ready at suitable stops through the day. One nice thing about the OSET is it about half the weight of the ICE motorcycle it replaced but with similar performance. As I have got older dealing with a heavy bike on dirt tracks had been an issue, so the OSET has made a few more years riding possible for me.

Last time I checked the specs of the Zero, about 5 years ago, they would not be suitable for a day road trip of the type you mention. That is a use case I like, so I think any current model would fall short of the mark. There are other more common use cases where the currently offering would be ok, like a day trip to the nearest big city, so I would still buy a Zero today if they were sold here. I'm guessing we are still about 5 to 10 years away from seeing the first models that can do the kind of trip you mention.

Charging is a real issue, with all models I have seen so far having slow charging. Rapid charging simply takes up too much space and weight to work well on current motorcycles. There are some smart engineers out there so hopefully they will come up with an acceptable solution but I don't care to speculate when that might happen.

If you care about noise and smell then buy an ICEV, but if you care about performance it has to be a BEV. I was walking thru a mall the other day and they had couple of Lotuses on display. They look pretty sharp but when I looked that spec sheets they both had slower 0-100kph times and lower top speeds than my Tesla and I bet they cost a lot more.

The nice guys at Zero let me ride one of their bikes when I was visiting the USA, really liked it. I like how BE motorcycles can give you more power with less weight to have to deal with. With an ICE motorcycle more power means more weight where as the BE it is more range that adds more weight. They don't sell the Zero in my country yet, or else I would have brought one by now. They do sell the OSET off road BE motorcycles here and I have a couple of them, much easier to man handle off road as they weigh less than half that of a comparable ICE motorcycle.