After the 2019 coup and the aftermath, they’re probably not going to embrace the U.S. for a bit. I don’t think they’ll be thrilled with Chinese or Russian involvement either but they already know what working with the U.S. gets them.
Overthrowing someone who first runs against the law because he’s already served the maximum term allowed and then wins by questionable means is not what I’d call a coup
It wasn’t like they ousted Morales and then had new elections watched by Jimmy Carter and the UN or whatever. A right wing government took power and threatened to arrest people who didn’t recognize Añez.
I’m not defending the initial election. I don’t know what happened but it didn’t look 100% legit. But I know everyone acted like it was a coup after the fact. Including famous lithium buying dipshit, Elon Musk: jalopnik.com/why-elon-musk-is-getting-owned-over-…
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it until I am blue in the face:
The Emerald Apartheid and Tesla have actively hurt the adoption of EVs. Even when they were 'the only game in town" (they weren’t) they still were working on it.
Because there is this stupid mindset of “you need massive range. Range is good. Range is everything”.
Range is helpful in three scenarios.
Long road trips
a day spent driving (e.g. being exploited by uber), and
not having any way to charge at home or at work
1 is not something you buy a car based around (unless your definition of “long” is 100 miles). 2… you probably aren’t buying a new vehicle if you are living off lyft.
3 is the interesting one and where I think the real harm was done. Because tesla’s solution is to use their Supercharger ™ Network ™ to Charge ™ their car ™. And it is a damned good network.
But… it encourages the mindset that to own an EV you either need an at home high powered charger or to spend 20-80 minutes (depending on congestion) at a tesla dealership or a whole foods every week. Which in turn means that people think they are stopping for an hour every three hours they spend driving on a roadtrip and so forth. So you obviously need THE BIGGEST BATTERY EVER!!!
When the reality is: That is stupid and not how people should be thinking of EVs. If you have any way to charge at home (and apartment complexes are increasingly providing them while older millennials and up probably have an outlet near their driveway), it doesn’t need to be fast. A trickle charge from a basic socket will get you done overnight. And if you don’t or you are on a road trip?
Don’t charge your battery to full every time you stop. Stop, plug it in, go stretch your legs or take a piss or buy a snack or just go grocery shopping, and 5-10 minutes later you are looking at a decently charged battery. And then do that again in two hours instead of three or whatever. Or twice a week instead of once a week.
Then, suddenly, massive batteries (and their weight and cost) matter a lot less.
Anyone interested in this: check out sites like A Better Route Planner. enter two destinations and then look at what it suggests. It won’t be “sit and charge to 100%”. It is “Stop at this charger when you are at around 10-15%, charge back up to 60% over maybe ten minutes, and then you are good to drive the rest of your trip” and so forth.
For example: one of my favorite weekend trips is a ~400 mile trip to a city a state over where I have a lot of friends. Google says I do that in ~6 hours. ABRP says that will take me about ~7 hours with two 20 minute charges along the way (middle of nowhere so you need to hit up charging stations where there are alternates in case they are damaged). Which… actually is closer to what it takes me when I do that drive because I need to stop for food or to piss or just to stretch my legs to avoid blood clots. Or, honestly, just gas before one stretch where I definitely will have enough left in the tank but might get stuck in traffic for hours if there is a particularly bad accident (and ABRP even suggests stopping in the same town I do. Likely for the exact same reason).
But, because of Hairplugs and tesla, people think they need MASSIVE batteries and the fastest possible charging or else they are trapped in their driveway for life.
Many of these athletes don’t even agree with the war and many are public about this disagreement.
Even the Olympics allows these athletes to perform under a none disclosed flag.
Why should Russian and Belarusian athletes be punished individually for the actions of their countries government?
I’ll point you to Wimbledon this year where Belarusian Victoria Azarenka was unfairly boo’d off court after her loss with Ukrainian Elina Svitolina. Azarenka has been openly against the war since it started. Why should she be punished?
Apparently this is how things are. It is a shame to see how individual responsibility, very valuable European value, is treated recently by some Europeans . But it looks like this is the reality of war. Things are not normal. Hopefully they will get back to normal someday soon.
I am Belarusian, I migrated with my family away from Belarus few years back in fear of politically motivated prosecution, before even the war begun. I had to experience this kind of attitude, my bank accounts were frozen for some time and there are still limitations to get a medical insurance. Surprisingly I never ever heard a bad word from Ukrainians themselves living here. They are amazingly understanding.
That said, I believe sport is bit different. At top level the athletes are often representatives of their countries. At international level sport is neatly intertwined with politics (especially so in post-USSR countries). So… yeah… that’s bad, but as Belarusian I fully support ban of Belarusian athletes from international competition, purely from respect to Ukrainian athletes, who shouldn’t be forced to shake hands with them. Also I keep supporting all sorts of sanction towards Belarusian and Russian regimes, even though it can inconvenience me as a side effect.
I also do not understand, typical keyboard warriors. Maybe we should also ban everyone with russian nationality from playing sports all together, ban them from supermarkets, gas stations… After all, this war was a consensual decision from every citizen.
We need to ostracize China in the same way as Russia, unfortunately. This is too bad because without this underhanded alliance between China and Russia, I would be kinda okay with China. Yeah, they’re not perfect, but at least they’re not Russia.
Yup. Untangling China will/would be much more difficult than dropping Russia was. The latter happened in a year, and with mostly positive ramifications. None of the scare scenarios that tankies talked about a year ago actually happened. We were supposed to get rid of using fossil fuels anyway.
Getting rid of Chinese products would lead to some positive outcomes – less unemployment in Europe being the most obvious one. But it’s an entirely different scale. Russia exported pretty much just alt-right political influence and gasoline. We’ll happily do without either. China has been the leading producers of a lot of important low and high tech for a lot of time.
And in other news millions of US arms to Ukraine keep ending up in Africa. But let’s talk about China helping Russia even though we already new this was going to happen from the start.
Right, are there not significant penalties for this? What if Honda said their new gas powered civic got 90mpg, is that fine as long as the CEO has enough charisma?
I dunk on the duped because they’ve had countless opportunities to see Elon for the liar he is but instead they act like he’s a genius. This is their Just Desserts.
What is “this”? Do you mean the lawsuit? The article? The comment?
If you’re going to contribute to a public discourse do better, dear.
I remember when the political right was wholly against electric cars because of the range. Then Elon showed he hates who they hate, and now they make excuses for the range while polishing his balls.
I haven’t been avoiding them per se. I did for a while because they weren’t as reliable but that time is well past. Since then I haven’t really need replacements, and it seemed a waste to upgrade “just because” while my current one was fine.
But the amount of times I want to leave the pointer in a specific spot and let go of the mouse and then seeing it move from cord tension is starting to drive me nuts. So wireless will fix that problem at least. Haven’t even begun looking out comparing yet as I so don’t need one yet.
Just waiting on the day it moves one time too many and I snap. 🤣
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