Tango

Ultimately we’re just gonna have to switch to EVs whether it’s convenient or not. Life is life and sometimes you just gotta suck it up and adapt to changing conditions. We’ll figure out all the little tricks for keeping batteries working the same way we figured out all the little tricks to keep diesel engines working: through trial and error and lots of cursing, followed by revelatory “ohhhhhhhhs” and word of mouth - sometimes even intergenerational word of mouth.

And we can talk and talk about which type of engine performs better but at the end of the day, humanity’s gonna keep starting wars over fossil fuels for as long as they’re valuable, driving the prices up higher and higher, so sustainable energy is the only path forward with any future, not just environmentally speaking but financially speaking. If you’re a self-employed haulier and you’re approaching retirement age, I could see why you’d wanna try and make your combustion engines last you to retirement. But anyone who’s buying, needs to buy electric or they’re sabotaging themselves. Because the big companies are gonna kick and scream against EVs and solar for as long as they think they can squeeze a little more profit out of fossil, but as soon as they make the switch to electric they’re suddenly gonna start lobbying government to tax the fuck out of anyone still running fossil. If you haven’t made the switch by then, you’re gonna be fucked.

It happened with the banking crisis: the entire system was geared towards keeping that game of musical chairs going as long as possible. But once one or two big names started to offload their CDO and CDO ^2s, things all changed very quickly and suddenly the players that already had chairs were eager to get the music to stop as quickly as possible. It’ll be the same way with fossil fuels: it’ll look like it’s gonna last forever until suddenly it’s dead.

The “transactions will be untraceable” thing seems to be new?

I didn’t know acquittals could be appealed.

If he’s capable of resurrection after being dead for 46 years, I’m certainly going to listen to Jean-Paul Sartre.

True but if it’s THAT obvious then there’s no need to say it, either. Every European soundbyte that urges Ukraine to accept territorial losses undermines its negotiating position with Russia in any peace talks. You don’t offer final concessions as an initial position. The optimal negotiating position for Ukraine is for Russia to be hearing “we’re behind Ukraine 100%; don’t give those Russian bastards a thing” from Ukraine’s allies. It doesn’t need to be the truth. Russia doesn’t even need to believe that we mean it. But Russia seeing its negotiating counterparties bravely hiding weakness is better than Russia seeing its negotiating counterparties so close to the brink that they’re not even capable of putting on a brave face anymore.

Russia isn’t publicly, officially acknowledging any painful realities on its side, even though we know the challenges it’s refusing to acknowledge, so we shouldn’t be the first to blink either. This isn’t a negotiation between friends.

Politicians don’t need to idly shoot the breeze on foreign policy just to please voters. There are some subjects where sharing idle opinions off the cuff is counterproductive. To quote The Godfather: “never tell anybody outside the family what you’re thinking again”.

300kg is slightly less than four average-weight grown men.

Do the buses not have GPS trackers so that an app on your phone can tell you exactly how long the wait for the next one is?