Very well put and also very true. Most people are absolutely unaware how fast big shifts happen. The invention of national-socialism with the foundation of the NSDAP happened 1920. A few years later a highly weaponized and aggressive Germany invaded Poland in 1939. 19 years from zero to war.
Considering how much more technology has evolved since then, it isn't far-fetched to think that this pace of devolution into totalitarianism could happen much faster today.
In fact, this is precisely what happened with ISIS. I shudder to think what might have happened if the powers to be had not put aside their differences to fight a common foe.
> I agree but how should this actually work? I feel like we have no options here. Everything comes from China, beginning with my mobile devices.
One option is to more or less emulate China. It's factories were built over the last 30 or so years. There's no reason that other countries couldn't start to replicate those capabilities and supply chains over a similar time period. It would probably require more automation to be economical in the West, however.
The hard part with that will be to force Western profit-uber-alles corporations to comply.
As a European I hope we find the courage and the strength to allow ourselves to be militarized as we where at the beginning of the 20th century. I think to a certain degree a military conflict with China would not be a bad thing. Here we have achived quite a few things of which each of his own would be worth dying for.
Typical western values are seriously underrated and are not taken seriously.
I don't think he really understands the full implications of modern warfare between global powers. He's likely thinking in terms of firearms and tanks. Maybe some airplanes.
Instead of military spending, we should get our education and politics act together. We should be at least ready to pivot to self sufficiency.
We depend on Putin's mercy for energy, because a lot of us skipped game theory in kindergarden apparently. Someone mentioned cell phones. Yes that'd be good, to have a full end to end electronics pipeline around here. And so on.
We have very little military spending. The ukraine invasion was a very successfull testrun for Putin.
We in Europe we keep ourselve weak and defenseless. Why?
We're not defenseless. The Ukraine just isn't part of either the NATO or the EU and not really close to the rest of Europe. If Russia was about to invade part of Finland the reaction would be quite different.
> Turning things around would require changes of a pace and scale that we have no idea how to motivate and coordinate
Yes everything leads to that question: How can a problem of global scaled be solved, if it seems to be almost impossible to make some progress domestically?
I think I begin to see what the "solution" is going to be like.
The good news is: The planet is not going to die. The bad news: I guess you not gonna like the solution.
I'm convinced that in 10-20 we are going to live much more eco friendly. It will become much more expensive to waste natural resources. But as a downside of this we will loose a lot of personal freedom. Our highly individualized society will come to an end and we will live in a much more controlled environment.
Harmfull behaviour will either be punished with legal sanctions (like corruption) or in some form of social disaproval.
TLDR: In the next 20 we will see a greener but also more unfree world.
Somehow I can understand his frustration, but I do wonder if he actually draw the right conclusion from this failure. Because there is only one reason this couldn't work: He was under capitalized. Maybe initialy he had an intuition that there wasn't enough capital around but in the end convinced himself into this miserable situation.
So the question is why didn't he invested more time and effort into raising capital? He weakened his negotiation position right from start. The notion that you can substitute the lack of money with skill is naive.
That's an interesting way of looking at it. I don't agree though.
No matter how much he invested, it wouldn't change the fact that he wasn't profiting. You can't just throw money at restsurants, and expect a return.
For example: say he had paid off his bills then upgraded all the plates, cutlery, glasses etc, to make it seem more upmarket. Notw throw more cash to hire a trained high end manager, and build up his existing staff.
That doesn't change the fact that people were not spending what he needed to profit.
From the whole bullshit confit chicken, that he either a)had a bad head chef or b) was dictating what he wanted, based off of what he had seen, despite any actual hospitality sense (this I think is more likely, from the articles tone).
You can't just demand the highest quality ingredients, throw money as your staff, and expect patrons to flock in.
Sometimes customers don't want what your selling, no matter how good you think it is. Dreamers start up restaurants without being businessmen, then are surprised when the customers don't show up, or don't return.
The fact that this guy switched chefs pretty early was a tell for me. People aren't dumb, they know the price of chicken, and expecting them to pay $29 was just dumb/naive.
It's hard to go through a failure like this, I can sympathize with him. It took me 20 years to get over my restaurant, and I still daydream about all the "what-ifs" and "wtfs" that I experienced. Then I look back and realize that I was far better off getting out of hospitality and into IT. The burnout I was already experiencing would have killed me.
Hmm I'm willing to give him a go-through on switching chef's - I have seen some pretty bad head chef's haha.
$29 chicken is a . ... Difficult sell though.
Yeah I agree with the what-if's, i think everyone has them about their history though, try not to let it get you down. (especially about hospitality!).
Any recommendations for an ex-chef by :-p. (and re:burnout, yeah I have my collection of stomach ulcers :-p)
I just watched the video and here is what I think could be approved. As someone who knows nothing about your project the first thing I’d like to know how it runs.
So I think you could get out more from your demonstration and place it before the API usage tutorial part.
Right now the demonstration feels a bit hasty and nervous. It would be nice to have more detail on whats going on in the demo.
That's a paired down version from 30 minutes. The decision we faced was:
Do we think asking people to watch a 30 minute intro video will cause far more people to drop off than a 15 minute video? If yes, can we convey a lot of the value of Wallaroo in 15 minutes and get them interested in learning more?
We decided the answer to both questions was yes. I'm planning on doing a couple longer intro videos for those with an appetite to learn more at a slightly more relaxed and less hurried pace.
My question to folks would be, what's the longest you'd be interested in watching? I have enough to cover that I could do:
30 minute, 60 minute or 90 minute videos, each providing more depth. How much time are folks generally interested in investing in videos of this sort?
It was surprisingly hard to figure out the problem with these two articles.I mean it all makes sense, I couldn't stop nodding. And dont get me started with the picture from the stairs where the fighting couple stands below the lamentable single person. I mean: yes! And if that is not enough, our reading efforts are rewarded with a handy checklist for choosing the right partner.
I know the author might not happy about this, but I have an odd feeling (ha, shoot me). And the intensions they where, as they always are , the intentions where good. Nobody was hurt, no potential was spoiled, no time was lost. Everyone is happy. Sure there are conflicts and stumbling blocks, but with solid work and communication you disolve them into harmless bumps while sailing away on your Loveboat. Ready for the next chapture. Buying a house. Having kids. Growing older together. Die with a smile on your face surrounded by caring people.
If anything is overly romantic, than this. Completely ignoring the context you live in and reduce everything to a handfull of personal traits and skills is overly simplicistic (stupid) and naive, because:
- you cannot create love by communication, or transform friendship or nice feeling into love
- It is reasonable if you seek for true love and believe in fate (But only until you're 30)
- If you have been hurt, betrayed, used and left, take it as a sign to loath yourself less (and not others more)
- Life can be bitter. Love can vanish. Dreams can be shattered.
There is this song "Hello" from Adele, which is fairly popular. It describes somehow a state of love and connection after it is long gone. Something I'm not sure this author would even understand.
Even if I don't live in the US and being not particularly interested I've heard about California’s water problem more then 10 ago. That means the problems and dangers are well know a relatively long time ago. There is a ton of publications and research on various levels and domains.
It seems to me that we are completely incapable to handle the challenges that come with (finite) natural resources. Our system works as long as it works and then it halts full stop. Like a massive train, there is no change of course.
I'm confused why the price per gallon for water isn't skyrocketing in California.
If the state is artificially keeping the price low, of course people aren't going to change their habits and business models. And the end game is running out of water instead of innovating to keep your water bill down.
Well, for one, water prices are not really set by a free market. Residential water providers are monopolies regulated by the local governments. They're not allowed to jack up their rates as it would hurt the poor. In San Juan Capistrano, the plaintiffs recently won a suit against tiered pricing on the argument that the water cannot be sold at a cost greater than the cost of providing it.
Agricultural interests with senior water rights have a legal right to a much greater amount of water at much lower cost. Those with riparian rights (upstream) have the right to take as much water as they can use.
There are hundreds of reasons why it's not as simple as "turn this knob to raise price".
That is interesting. I live in Austin, TX and my water bill is all kinds of complicated. A good portion of the dollar amount is actually sewer. We're encouraged to game the system by using as little water as possible during the cold months. Then in the warm months the excess is marked as 'agriculture' and thus we don't pay sewer on it.
The city also doesn't read my meter monthly, but yearly. It just estimates it from month to month. So about once a year I get a huge, insane bill for about 3 times my monthly bill. OTOH they only bill me for the water when they do that so technically I'm getting sewer for 'free' during the year.
/sarcasm: I wonder why there aren't air access riparian rights (upstream) or senior air rights. It seems logical if there are such rights for water, there should be similar rights for air.
In actuality, it is one of enforcement. It is relatively easy to track and identify water usage. You can disguise a well only for so long. If the US federal government had the means to regulate air usage by so many cubic feet per year, they would.
For some industries this already exists in the form of the regulation of emissions. If you're capping an industries carbon output into atmosphere what you are really capping is the mass of oxygen they can consume from the atmosphere. If you do the thermodynamic analysis of it, you're basically putting a cap on the amount of energy that a business can acquire from using the atmosphere. Most industries run 24/7, so it is really easy to calculate how much oxygen they'll use each year and how much carbon they'll emit into the atmosphere.
It isn't so easy for individuals and smaller businesses. For example, I own a generator that uses oxygen from the atmosphere to get electrical energy. However, I only use it for a tiny fraction of each year.
Just a guess but if you're talking about tap water costs raising those would hit the poorest the worst. Secondly if they raise them high enough it becomes better financially to purchase bottled water (which I assume wouldn't rise in price as much as the companies producing that are global businesses and a spike in demand in one area shouldn't affect the overall pricing too much) - again not a problem for those that can afford it.
Water costs less than a half cent per gallon. Water could double, triple or quadruple in price and still be 'affordable' for the poor to drink. It certainly would not cause them to drink bottled water, which is like 10,000x more expensive- But, Shorter showers and no more watered lawns? Absolutely. But if all it takes to survive for a family of four to have clean drinking water is 5 cents, i think you might be claiming it impacts the poor a little bit too far.
Bottled water costs orders of magnitude more than tap water, so there's little danger that raising water rates will provide much incentive to switch to tap water.
I live in Santa Barbara. The first 3000 gallons of tap water I use each month cost 0.5 cents per gallon. Even the most expensive rate for my water is only 2 cents per gallon. Bottled water, even in bulk, tends to cost $0.50 or more a gallon.
And of course agricultural users pay an order of magnitude less than I do.
But isn't that the case with ALL finite/natural resources? In this case it's might be the state, in the case of oil it might be other actor(s), in case of rare minerals the causes are again different.
Could our world even work without these discount prices? Probabely not. Thats why this is all so terrifying. There is no data about how much oil or silicon or aluminium or uranium we have. We dig this things out and throw them on the marked and then act as if those prices reflect the value of this things.
The problem with setting one price for water is that very rich people will always be willing to shell out what's needed while poor people who lack the means will suffer. Some kind of dynamic pricing based on a wealth/income/property value proxy might solve this.
> “With the stroke of his pen, the Governor changed over 100 years of water laws – without the people’s input. This is not the democracy Californians deserve.” – State Senator Jim Nielsen
> In the midst of drought and heightened overdrafting problems, California passed legislation allowing the state to control and regulate the use of groundwater on privately-owned land. Citizens, previously free to use whatever water was underneath their own land, are now preparing to challenge this governmental undermining of their property rights in court.
Private property owners were engaging in unsustainable behavior for their economic benefit is basically why this is a problem. Proper planning and not burning through reserves to grow almonds/alfalfa/etc for export would have prevented the issue from getting this bad.
Normally I would support libertarian attitude, but in that case it seems like a pretty reasonable Governor was elected by people, precisely because these people wanted these particular strokes of the pen, instating reasonable control over access to common resource. Democracy at work.
Attitude "...If I’m an overlying landowner, I have the right to pump as much water as I can..." leads only to the tragedy of the commons and ensuing disaster...
I'm just explaining why this came about. This is very much a tragedy of the commons where one sector of the economy was able to profit from this privilege and socialize the costs now that it is a problem for them.
Growing up in California, I remember drought scares and water restrictions in the 1980s. Why didn't the state do anything then? We could be on our third generation of "ten-year moonshot projects" for desalination or other water solutions.
I don't think it's the states problem. You find this kind of alarming situations all over the planet. The development pattern is always the same: Use it to the end as fast as possible. The poorer or weaker the state the faster it goes. But the development and the direction takes place with or without state.
I don't want to offend anyone, but really Apple has become a lousy company. The single only thing that still flawlessly works is indeed the "glossy surface" (article).
Their hardware, sold as rock-solid, is partly flawed. My (and thousands of other users ) Macbook graphic card broke after 12 month.
The OS and their software has become bloated inconsistent and buggy.
Their customer service is so bad, it even beats some of the worst telecom companies in my country.
Their sales people are good looking but technically incompetent.
Some of Apples technologies (Applescript, Objective-C) are just awful.
I think Apple products and services are only usable, if you have a lot of money to throw around and if you don't really rely on them, but look at them as toys to play around.
Using Ubuntu and Android now, I can admit that the UI is not nearly as sexy. But stuff works or can be fixed in reasonable time.
