I worked with Franklin for a short while in the late 90s. He was an intimidating, if fair person. Very little tolerance for bs or people who wanted to look good. But if he asked you something and you didn't know the answer he was fair if you just said so (which I had to do on at least one occasion). Did not know he passed, or that he was involved with SETI. I remember reading in a local SD paper a few years ago that he gave quite a bit to a local charity for the homeless. He was a very independent thinker, so not so surprised that he might make some unconventional choices in how he gave away his money.
I'm not really in the market to buy a car, but I was thinking the prius prime was a good compromise. Basically it's a plug in hybrid with a large enough battery for a lot of day to day city driving (44 miles), but hybrid after that. Seems fairly low risk in terms Toyota having pretty extensive experience with hybrids.
In terms of improving the environment it would seem like not driving/using public transportation trumps any ev or hybrid anyway.
IMHO the plug in hybrids are a great compromise. I'm happy with mine. If one can charge at home and one's daily mileage is within the plug in range, one can easily cut most of their emissions.
It has the added benefit of not having to worry about range/changing on road trips. My biggest concern with it is stale gas in the tank from not using the gas engine that much, I don't think I've filled the tank more than three or four times in the last year.
As you point out, not driving is better, but for many people it's not possible due to the public transportation systems/bike paths not being particularly great in most of the US.
Yep, that'll also reduce the negatives of bad gas. Then on top of that you've got lots of detergents blended in these days to try and help prevent/cleanup that stuff, and modern ECUs can detect and dynamically remap when the gas is starting to go bad, etc.
Unless you're leaving the gas in your modern car for >~1yr I probably wouldn't worry about it too much.
The biggest issue is they aren't making anywhere near enough of them.
Toyota argues that batteries are constrained and that for one EV they can make five PHEVs which will reduce emissions more than that one EV. It makes sense on paper and they have a wildly popular PHEV in the RAV4 Prime but they haven't even remotely scaled to meet demand, so it feels more like we are replacing one EV with one PHEV while the other four buyers go ICE or plain hybrid.
Pricing is the other problem. The Prius Prime is more expensive than a Model 3, even before you factor in the $7500 tax credit and the inevitable Toyota dealer markup. The Prius Prime made a lot of sense when it was $10,000 cheaper than a model 3, but does it make as much sense when it's $10,000 more expensive than a base Model 3?
I agree that the pricing is too high, although I think the base model ends up only being ~$1000 higher than the base model 3 with a $7500 tax credit. Dealer markups are a huge problem but mostly stem from Toyota not producing enough to meet demand.
I think there are a lot of people for whom the math works out on Toyota PHEVs at MSRP, they might be worried about range anxiety, they might travel a lot (56mpg at US prices generally costs less than super charging), they might not need a home charger because they can charge up at work, they want a super-reliable car they can drive into the ground, etc.
but a lot of that is thrown out the window if you have to get on 10 waitlists, wait 6+ months, and pay $10k over sticker.
I'm not really sure where you're getting that number. 2024 Prius Prime SE shows up as $32,675 for me on Toyota.com before $1,095 delivery fee for a total of $33,770 as seen here: https://www.caranddriver.com/toyota/prius-prime
M3 is $38,990 + $1,390 delivery fee, minus the tax credit comes to $32,880, or about $890 cheaper than the Prime. Come January 1st the M3 will be almost $3k more unless changes are made to the tax credit.
That's a really good question. I'm not sure where I got the price, and can't find it again. $40K is a bad price for a Prius Prime, so if it isn't I'm happy to be corrected.
The problem is that with tax incentives, you can get a Tesla Model 3 for same/less depending on how you spec out your Prius. The Tesla is also going to be more fun to drive / attractive to most people.
Other problem with hybrid is you have all the maintenance & failure modes of ICE plus the maintenance & failure modes of EV in one vehicle. Statistically they have the highest rate of vehicle fires (this makes sense, you have the risks of both ICE & EV under 1 hood).
> Other problem with hybrid is you have all the maintenance & failure modes of ICE plus the maintenance & failure modes of EV in one vehicle.
You'd think so but in practice most hybrid designs allow for some fairly radical simplification compared to your average ICE vehicle. eCVT transmissions are stupid simple and reliable compared to traditional automatics and also have the benefit of replacing the starter and alternator. The high voltage system also let's you easily replace failure prone belt driven components like power steering pumps and A/C compressors with electric versions. Hybrids can also hit efficiency and power targets while naturally aspirated, avoiding the need for turbos and all of the associated complexity which is very common in ICE cars.
Hybrids generally also have longer maintenance intervals because the engine only runs ~2/3rds of the time relative to ICE for a given distance driven. Rotors and pads will also last much much longer.
US minimum wage has not increased since 2009 and is $7.50. How many people in the private sector are at the same job for 14 years with no pay increases. Minimum wage at a minimum should be tied to inflation and I think $15 an hour increase over 4 years is more than fair to employers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_S...
What of the unemployment provoked by legally forcing the price of labor higher? Think about it: WHen the price of something goes up, do you buy more or less
of it? One might as well call the minimum wage the "ceiling employment".
Why use our imaginations to “think about it”, when we can look at the data and see what actually happens in reality?
The minimum wage has jumped up several times in the past due to government updates, and it has gradually shrunk over time due to inflation, and neither of those things has been particularly correlated with employment rates
According to the BLS, workers earning the federal minimum wage or less represented only 1.4 percent of all hourly paid workers in 2021. Taking into account all workers (not just those who are hourly paid), this small fraction would shrink even further, so I wouldn't expect them to have much affect on the overall unemployment rate.
Minimum wage changes are counterproductive in almost all instances. They consume a large amount of political capital, are rendered pointless by inflation and penalise those who produce less value than the minimum.
There are better policies to protect poor workers, like reducing taxes on the poor or allowing government welfare for those with jobs. These help workers without distorting markets and hurting workers. The only case minimum wages are useful is if all the alternatives are impossible.
Is this your opinion or can you cite some sources. My biggest mandatory expense is medical insurance and I hardly think that is driven by the minimum wage.
I don’t know of any good sources that cover this in terms of comparing policies. But most of my points (eg inflation negating minimum wages and the whole discussion consuming political capital) are self evident. The most extreme example of minimum wages failing is South Africa. I’ve seen interviews where people in poverty there want it to be removed since it just leads to more unemployment and/or black market employment below the minimum.
I don’t understand the link to medical insurance. In my country poor people get free healthcare. Low wage earners still get taxed, which I think is immoral and is exactly the kind of policy discussion that minimum wage proponents smother.
My point was in the US medical inflation far outpaces all other non discretionary expenses and it's not because of the minimum wages. Minimum wages affect business that pay minimum wage and that's more like non essentials like eating out or going to the movies. I can't speak to the economics of South Africa but I'm not sure what happened there would necessarily apply in the US. At least it's not obvious to me.
I have not tried it but is there some reason you can't simply record from an headphone jack? I thought there was some Linux app that would just do this.
On thing that I've read about is ear based EEG. Easier simpler contact for things like sleep studies. They don't list that as supported, but it is an example.
This looks really cool I've used beancount/fava for tax planning, but of course I had to code up my own tax models. In the US tax table change every year (by a predictable formula) and some forms of income are weird, like I bonds are exempt from federal tax, but are taxed by state income tax. It seems unlikely that you could support all the cases, but is there a straightforward way to plug in your own model? I did see in tax.go you had long term, short term, but couldn't quite find the income tax tables, like long term capital gains has different rates depending upon filing status and amount.
I have replied at another thread, but there is no plugin support as of now. My country changes the rules every year and add grandfathering, xyz rules etc. I think, I have to figure out a DSL or some other way to make it general. This is something I am interested, but haven't figured out how to solve it yet.
Having been of a record buying age at that time, I think "New Wave" was really more of a marketing term. Punk had a somewhat bad reputation at the time, 78 I would have been 14. New Wave was a way to get people to buy records that were not from big venue rock bands, i.e. Stones, Who, ELO, Kiss etc. The Police's first record was considered "punk" when I got it among my peers. Got me into more of the local LA punk bands, although I was listening the Dickies before the Police. I knew lots of people listened to Blondie, the Dickies, the Germs or Black Flag not so many. As I mentioned on the other thread I actually was at the Pantages for the talking heads show it was awesome!
I made the cardboard scanner many years ago both to scan whole books as well as sections of books from the library. It worked pretty well but nowadays in practice I usually look into the open library at the Internet archive first. Hope it sticks around.
