Japan is currently undergoing an oil crisis that the government is desperately attempting to hide. Companies have been saying they don't have the supplies they need for continued operation, and some are sucking it up by cutting back on manufacturing or eating a loss out of fear of retribution from the PM or her incredibly loyal following.
Other companies have said that they're facing shortages, but if you don't read/believe the news, it's easy to ignore. Calbee is the first large corporation to make it unavoidably apparent that there are shortages, and that if things don't change, it's going to be much worse than mere ink shortages.
As a personal example, medicine that my doctor prescribed used to come in individually wrapped packs. It was like this for years. Due to plastic shortages, it's now all put into a single bag. Environmentally speaking it's better and I don't mind. But it's a massive shift and this is just the start of the shortage. With no solution in sight, and with shortage resolution taking months even if the war ended tomorrow, it's going to get worse and there's no way around it.
Naphta may sound obscure, but it's the base for a ton of products. I actually had no idea, until the building / construction companies around here started getting into serious trouble (I wrote about that in another comment).
It's close and it will happen. In my Tesla it already drives itself nearly 100% of the time through city streets, highways, rush hour traffic, complex situations (hardware 4 Teslas are amazing). I also have a Toyota truck and it feels like such a downgrade to drive without self driving anymore. It's only a matter of time before Tesla and others perfect self driving (as Waymo nearly has done) and we no longer have human driven taxis/ubers/lyfts and regular drivers are also on self driving. It will save time, lives and reduce road rage.
It doesn’t have to be completely unsupervised for the driver to realize huge improvements in quality of life. I don’t even notice when people drive slow or cut me off. I’m just relaxing, fiddling with the music or talking to my family. And managing two toddlers is a lot easier when my brain doesn’t have to run a constant background job.
I do hope that unsupervised comes soon though. The tech is there, or at least far enough that I consider it better than my own driving. The hurdle is regulatory now.
If you're distracted and not actively monitoring an SAE Level 2 autonomous system then you're a hazard to yourself and others. Don't do that. You need to be ready to actively intervene with zero advance notice.
You're technically correct of course, but the fact of the matter is every driver gets distracted/tired and having the FSD safety net only makes things safer, assuming you don't go out of your way to get distracted. I've lost count of the times I looked over at a "dumb" car being driven by someone on their phone. Would you rather that person be in a Tesla using FSD or in their Subaru Crosstrek?
Unfortunately, even if we'd prefer to not accept it, we live in a world where those people exist. So I hope that they are being driven by their self-driving car when they inevitably drink and drive or fall asleep at the wheel. And to mitigate the impact of the ones driving a non-self-driving car, I'm going to use my self-driving certified-safest car to drive my family around.
So far I've been impressed enough with the HW4 Teslas that I haven't had them do anything that I had to intervene to correct or prevent. It's pretty amazing at how well it handles all kinds of things - construction, weird merges, road debris. This morning, there was a tire in the middle of the road, which caused traffic ahead of me to slam to a halt. Mine had to brake hard enough that ABS engaged, and then navigated around the tire. I was impressed.
It's not close at all. Not where it snows in winter. This union will last at least a decade. Waymo and Tesla claim to be coming for northern states but ice and snow tell a very different story. You simply can't go FSD in a snowstorm.
That’s the one I meant. It’s the core, but in a box, which makes it look even more innocuous, like he is indeed just lugging a piece of industrial equipment around. There’s lots of photos of the actual (unboxed) cores online if you search.
>makes it look even more innocuous, like he is indeed just lugging a piece of industrial equipment around
if i remember correctly what i read it was done intentionally for security reasons - instead of all the pomp-and-circumstance of a large strong security convoy the core was delivered by a driver in a simple inconspicuous truck.
These anti AI westerners won't burn down the datacenters in China. These westerns will be subjugated to a lower quality of life as Asia in general rises as they embrace tech and use the advantages for their own. The same with the tech companies the westerners try to neuter, they'll pass the advantages to giant Chinese conglomerates instead
This is the lifecycle of every civilization. Reach dominance and then when life becomes easy, forget about what it takes to stay at the top. This makes room for the next civilization.
I think a large part of why they do this and vote the way they do is because of comments like yours. Hacker news, Reddit, award shows, movies, universities, etc all have a constant drum beat of disdain and hate towards them. I think this motivates them into voting even if the vote is against their own interest.
Everything republican party do and everything republicans vote for ... are fault of the opposition. Always. Republicans are little helpless souls having no choice but cause maxinum harm as long as opposition in any for exists.
Look at what that party collectively stands for now, who they kick out and who they keep. They all stand behind trump.
I learned recently that there's actually a name for this concept. Murc's law states that in American politics, only Democrats are assumed to have agency.
Presumably democratic reforms could help change the dynamic if they changed the incentives. Right now, it's a politically viable strategy to just obstruct the other party when out of power, and politically unviable strategy for Congress to oppose a president from the same party. Both of which lead to a lot of dysfunction.
As an example, if Congress had multimember districts with an appropriate voting system (e.g. ranked choice voting for all members at the same time), then you can effectively nullify the power of gerrymandered voting districts (the current system, where effectively politicians choose voters rather than the other way around). Doing so would elevate the influence of general elections over party primaries. Then representatives would be less afraid of challenges in those primaries, which is currently one of the major disincentives in opposing the president of the same political party (fear of being "primaried").
That is just progressive vs conservative, ie changing things vs conserving things, humans are biased to conserve things unless the set of changes are overwhelmingly better.
So conservatives win when progressives push for too many changes, not changing things is the default. So saying that the democrats lost the election by pushing too fast is not weird, that is just how humans works.
There's definitely an asymmetry in how the systemic dysfunction benefits the Republican party over the Democratic party. (Overall the system benefits both parties though since it entrenches partisanship.)
I'd argue that the asymmetry has less to do with change vs. no change and more to do with the Republican party currently being an "anti government" party (pivoting to that post New Deal). So less is expected of them in terms of functional governance.
With respect to change: I've heard a lot of commentary that the Republican party today is more of an instigator of change than the Democratic party (being seen as a defender of the status quo), despite the traditional alignment of Republican/conservative/no change. Democrats are seen as pro-institution and Republicans anti-institution.
In case it matters, I personally don't identify with a political party. I just want functional government and politics and I see a lot of dysfunction. I'm an engineer so naturally I gravitate towards systemic solutions to systemic problems.
> That is just progressive vs conservative, ie changing things vs conserving things.
Conserving distraction == wars, progressive distraction == LG, then B, then T, there are still letters in the alphabet to progress to - mandatory for school children to study in detail.
Conserving inflation same as progressive inflation, the small group benefiting form it - the same too.
Changing presidential candidates a few months before election and doing everything to let the other side win? Very progressive.
Promising no-more-wars and delivering more-wars? Very conservative.
Moral of the story - while 'progressive' and 'conservative' are used haphazardly, lacking precise and concrete definitions in terms of specific, measurable goals and commitments, using them for political analysis is just mud in the eyes.
Unironically yes. I lived in the Seattle area and witnessed firsthand the effects of state/county/city Democrat rule. Gifted programs cancelled, streets full of homeless and drug addicts. Hateful people yelling at and flipping me off as I take my kids to daycare for the heinous crime of driving a Tesla. I’m a well educated highly paid minority, the kind of voter that Democrats take for granted. I voted Republican down the ballot last election.
Assuming that people vote a certain way out of spite is narrow-minded. Talk to people outside of your bubble and try to understand them instead of reducing them down to caricatures. I don’t judge people on the left the way that I get judged by them. I genuinely think that my choice of political party is better for my family’s quality of life.
Well let me be the first to thank you for the extra dollar a litre on my fuel, the extra hundred or so dollars a month on my mortgage and the impending recession that your choice has imposed upon me here in Australia.
Thanks so much for voting in Trump and his enablers.
Rather than blame this voter, why don't we put some blame onto the democrats. In San Francisco, progressive democrats have wasted billions on homeless and crime but with little to show for.
Sometimes democrats do push too far left. Far left is not that much different than far right.
Horseshoe theory is real, but much like Seattle, SF's biggest problem is politically active NIMBYs (and SF has more than most places). Democrats and Republicans both have NIMBYs, it transcends political boundaries.
I don’t really give a rats ass who runs the internals of your country, and what goes on in San Francisco seems like a you problem. Due to voters like this, Trump is now my problem many thousands of miles away.
Don’t underestimate just how much ill will he is generating around the world, especially in allied nations, by insulting leaders and pushing up all of our energy prices.
Strange that when Democrats mess things up “they didn’t do that” or “that’s a you problem” but when the other side does something you’re very quick to assign specific blame. One-sided thinking like this is why no one can find common ground anymore and politics has veered off into extremes.
There’s nothing strange or one-sided there at all.
One party or other mismanaging San Francisco or Seattle has zero effect on me here in Australia. A madman waving his dick around overseas and insulting everyone does though, and is costing me hundreds of dollars a month.
I think we're beyond the point of "you can't criticize them. That's mean and motivates them." At what point is the line drawn? Should it be in bad taste to criticize Orban supporters because it makes them support him more? What about Erdogan? Putin? Kim Jong Un? And why is it one sided that they can't be criticized, but it's all fair and good for their own leaders to demonize everyone? It's a silly double standard and people see through it now. Concern trolling stopped being effective years ago.
If you want to win elections, yes. You never convince voters by telling them that they are evil people. Its fine to say Trump is evil, its not fine to say Trump voters are evil because those voters will now be much less likely to vote for you. They can't take back their votes, they already voted for Trump before, so they will just not vote for you when you attack them like that.
Republicans have been calling democratic voters baby-killers for the entire time I have been aware of what a republican is. This sort of behavior has only gotten worse over time. They still manage to win elections.
I get that there are real asymmetries here, but I really don't think there are substantial blocs of swing voters who use "who has insulted them less" as a real factor. If that were the case, Trump would not have made the gains he did in 2024.
The important thing is to make people feel welcome in your coalition. It is clearly possible to do that either with or without being nice. It's just a different skillset.
If you have to lie to make a point, maybe the point is invalid. And the same goes for your other comments on this page ... they have no truth to them. Low quality trash comments like "[Newsom] does seem wildly corrupt though with extreme exceptions in bills for his friends and backers, more than other politicians I've seen" and "Betting sites are trusted third parties".
I will ignore further bad arguments and baseless claims from this source.
What you say is insightful and true. The west, America in particular, has a genuine problem today with its politics of polarising people to extremes. It partly has to do with how politics is done online in the internet, through the creation of "echo chambers" where no "dissent" is tolerated.
Dems have tried the strategy of pandering to republicans for decades. That strategy in 2024 backfired and made Dems not care about the election. The whole time republicans ran a campaign saying that blue haired democrats are harming kids and they're burning down cities and someone needs to lock them up all up. Republicans had a great election year.
Again, one sided. People are tired of it. More importantly, people are growing tired of the tolerance for the people who support the current happenings. Look around about what people who stayed out of the 2024 election said and it's that Dems were milquetoast and tried to be friendly and play both sides. Look around and see why republicans were fired up to vote. It's because they loved the demonization of Dems.
The funny thing is you can criticize the supporters. It's no problem. You can criticize Bush voters and everyone will agree with you. Why? Because nobody voted for Bush. Yet he won two elections. Meaning those people regretted their vote and now completely hide that they voted for him. They also retroactively hate the Iraq War, despite supporting it in 2003 and saying anyone who opposes it is unamerican. But those people will now say Dems started the war.
Trying to pull those people over is like trying to wrestle with a greased pig. No kind words will ever be enough to grab them. They're incredibly loyal to their side no matter what, and will deny ever supporting it the moment social pressure builds up too much. But interestingly, they also respect anger and vitriol against those they feel betrayed them. Republicans loved voting for Trump because he said he was against neocons and the Iraq War and all those people who voted for them. If Trump ever falls out of favor, those people who once supported him won't be begging for leniency. They'll put on a new hat and demand revenge against him and his supporters. They don't want a both aisles softy. They'll just pretend they were always against him.
> That strategy in 2024 backfired and made Dems not care about the election
Are you saying democrats didn't vote for Kamala since Kamala didn't call Trump voters evil? What are you on about? I see no reason why you should call Trump voters evil.
As I said its fine to call Trump evil, but why call the voters evil? What purpose does that serve?
> Are you saying democrats didn't vote for Kamala since Kamala didn't call Trump voters evil?
Dems were disillusioned by the Biden administration's lack of meaningful effort to nail the previous administration's criminals to the wall. Merrick Garland was an absolute failure.
Add in things like cozying up to the Cheneys, and the incorrect assumption Trump II would be similar to Trump I.
Everything Trump has done since he was re-elected made Democrats hate him more, and more publicly, and you know what, despite that Trump's ratings have steadily fallen.
If your thesis is true, you'd expect Trump's ratings to go up.
As far as I can see, partisan hatred doesn't matter, because pretty much everybody speaking and listening to such rhetorics have already made up their minds. The battle is fought in the middle, and these people don't care about latest Truth Social posts. They care about the price of gas.
Trump fucked with the one thing people will not forget about, because their livelihood depends on it. It's going to be... interesting.
That's a completely intellectually bankrupt argument that blames good people for the actions of bad people. It doesn't have a shred of fact or logic to support it.
Not me, trump should have at most received 1 to 2 percent in either primaries or the general election, even in 2016 we knew what sort of fellow he was, at least the folks who could read more than a paragraph in a sitting.
The primaries were the worst, at least the generals you get conservatives voting party lines, the primaries are where "conservatives" decided that trump was their guy. just go back and read up on republicans descriptions of trump before they had to get in line in the wake of the trump victories. I exclusively hold the trump voters in the primaries responsible. We're the sort of country of laws that traditionally says any loser can run for office, its our job as a society to keep at least a plausible set of standards for who we want in office. "Conservatives" who went trump either failed to do their due dilligence, or they are aligned with trumps value system which common decency prevents me from describing in any detail.
Why are all the Democrats Fox News (and the actual President of the United States himself) does a "constant drum beat of disdain and hate towards" not doing the same thing? Why is this only a concern on one side?
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