Yes they are. How many wars has the USA fought, how many governments has the USA toppled, and how many dictatorships has the USA supported to help protect oil supplies? What were the costs of those in actual dollars, casualties, injuries, and blowback (ie, the 9/11 attacks)? How many abandoned oil wells and oil spills has the US government been forced to clean up? How many people have health issues such as asthma or cancer because of vehicle exhaust and what has been the financial toll? The list goes on.

Combustion vehicles have a ton of external costs. Electric vehicles have them too, but they're not as severe and they're decreasing much faster rate than for the former. That is a benefit to you and to society.

That inventory does not always hang out in a warehouse. It is often sold internationally, quite often below cost, just to get it off the books. Government subsidies offset some of that loss.

It is good for the consumer in the short term because it drives down the price of goods. But in the long term, if sustained, it can undercut local competition, driving them out of business. That can result in job losses, higher prices down the road due to the lack of competition, and becoming dependent on a source that could dry up due to political maneuvering.

Japanese automakers have also found large SUVs to be quite profitable for markets like the USA. I can't really see Toyota Grand Highlanders and Sequoias rolling down the streets of Tokyo. And they've also been slow to adopt electrification. Back in the earliest days of the Prius, one of Toyota's executives said that every model would be offered as a hybrid in about a decade. That might happen after three decades.

Back when I was in school, a number of students thought that they could use CliffsNotes in lieu of studying the actual material as a shortcut when handing in papers. Problem was that CliffsNotes overly summarized material, so your papers tended to be shallow or generic, which clued most teachers into your activities. I recall a few teachers keeping students after class and then pelting them with questions about the material that weren't covered by the CliffsNotes. If they stumbled, they were given a failing grade for the paper.

I see AI in much the same way. It is okay at providing generalized summaries for well covered topics, but I find that it quickly goes off into the weeds for anything more niche, complicated, or requiring nuance. More often, I find myself mining the responses for their sources. But I can often find the same sources much faster using a web search. So, what is the benefit here again?

I had a smart TV that included an integrated camera and a Skype app for video conferencing. The app worked for about two years until we received a notice that it was too old a version to use anymore. A newer version of Skype wasn't available for my smart TV series. Nor were any alternative video conferencing apps.

This is why I dismiss any smart features in a TV. The industry is notorious for orphaning their products. Why should I come to depend on a feature that will likely disappear in a year or three?

Similar view when it comes to smart infotainment systems in automobiles, too.

I can see very little difference between 1080p and 2160p content on my 55" OLED when sitting about 8' away. But I can see a huge difference with high dynamic range and wide gamut color content. I've watched a few horror films that use light spilling into dark rooms with HDR to great effect. Likewise, I've seen some sci-fi films where bioluminescence in wide gamut color looks amazing.

If anything, a PHEV that is never charged is actually worse than a HEV because it carries around a few hundred extra kg worth of batteries and charging equipment. That's going to lower fuel efficiency a bit.

I do know that PHEVs purchased for commercial motorpools tend to see low plug-in rates because the drivers don't care. It isn't as if the drivers are saving money and enforcement can be a cumbersome.

And some people bought PHEVs back when they still qualified for carpool access, even if they had no ability to charge. I have a neighbor with a Fusion PHEV that did exactly this.

There are also a few exotic PHEV sports cars with little electric range that mostly use the electric powertrain for low-end torque improvements. If your car only gets 15 km in EV mode, I can see why you might not always plug it in.

I tend to limit my PHEV's charging to overnight at home and the occasional free charger at work or while shopping. I could charge more often, but daytime electric rates and public charger rates discourage it.

Something else is range. My PHEV gets about 75 km on a full charge, which covers about 95% of my family's typical in-town driving. I looked at PHEVs that only had around 50 km of range on a full charge and couldn't justify the cost vs. payback period since our all-electric coverage would drop so much. You'd also need to be more habitual regarding charging. No thanks. I'd rather just get a HEV.

Engaging the engine at highway speeds is quite common with HEVs because they use weaker motors and because of how their planetary gearset operates. Older generations of the Prius HEV had the latter limitation.

But as an owner of a RAV4 PHEV, I can attest that the vehicle can operate in EV-only mode at speeds up to 80 MPH. When I have EV range remaining, the engine will generally only engage if I switch from EV-only to either auto-EV/HEV or HEV-only modes. I believe I've only seen it kick on the engine when in EV-only mode once when I was driving, err, umm... fast.

Which is why at some point, personal assault drones will be as necessary as firearms to keep the government in check. Just look at how they have changed the power dynamic in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

When AI summaries kill off their own sources, where will AI scrapers find new content?

I'd argue that the golden age of the Web is coming to an end. AI search summaries and chatbots are delivering a one-two punch of diminished user counts and higher bandwidth costs (due to over-aggressive scraping). As profits decline, I expect that more niche content sites will begin to disappear and more mainstream sites will suffer from enshittification as they turn to less savory forms of monetization and cut less profitable parts of their sites.

And as AI LLMs start to degrade and users revolt, I suspect that any renaissance of the Web will be limited because they'll just feed their own competition again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Gambling ads are now so pervasive that I wonder how people recovering from compulsive gambling manage. They're all over traditional TV, streaming TV, the Internet, radio ads, magazine ads, etc... Even supposedly "ad free" streaming services like to slip in an ad or two at the start of a show. Either you quickly learn to resist temptation or you are screwed.

The article does not state if employees are required to come in at specific times or for a minimum duration. If employees can get away with coffee badging around lunch, at least they'll be able to avoid the rush hour crush on I-405 and SR-520.

But they'll still have to absorb the added costs of coming into work. And I highly doubt that Microsoft is adjusting compensation upward to make up for it. So these folks will be poorer and will have their lives disrupted for what exactly?

Even worse, the Trump Administration is selling this as a good thing. They're arguing that a lot of these losses are from negative aspects of our economy, such as bloated government and undocumented workers, and from areas that are readjusting to economic shifts triggered by the tariffs (read: onshoring).

But onshoring isn't really happening at the rate Trump wants because of low confidence that the tariffs will remain as-is in four years, because of supply chain issues with manufacturing equipment, because government dependencies such as permits, grants, and infrastructure are in chaos because of cuts, and because it takes a long time to stand everything up. So a lot of companies are just eating the costs of tariffs and shutdowns and cutting elsewhere (read: layoffs) just so that they can survive and regroup after Trump.

And positions vacated by undocumented workers just aren't being backfilled fast enough because of low wages, location, training, and desirability. That's having a knock-on effect down the line, resulting in layoffs elsewhere. Worse, nobody really knows when it will all stabilize.

So no... these are not just short-term transient losses. Things are getting ugly out there and we're likely tipping into recession. This goes double if the AI bubble bursts and datacenter building collapses. And since we've burnt so many of our foreign trading partners, it is likely weak exports will keep the country in recession for much longer.

And dismantling our free society is exactly what conservatives are advocating to reverse the low birth rates in the USA, as documented in the Project 2025 gameplan.

What is to be seen is if reversing modern family planning options and cultural norms will be negated by the inevitable brain drain that comes from living in a fascist police state.

It depends. If you are a low mileage driver and have access to a dedicated 115V outlet in the garage, then the EVSE that's included with your car might do the trick. That's free.

On the other end, if you have multiple BEVs with high mileage drivers, an old house with a low amperage breaker, and a long drop from the utility that would also need to be replaced, that might cost tens of thousands of dollars to upgrade.

I spent less than $200 on 10 meters of 12/2 NM cable (Romex), a double pole breaker, a heavy duty 240V20A outlet (NEMA 6-20), and an outdoor outlet box. Bought a used EVSE with the proper outlet plug for $150. Labor was free. No breaker panel work needed since I upgraded it to 200 amps two years prior when I swapped my gas appliances out for electric (that was $3500).

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