Saudis murder journalist in Turkey

I think we're going to go electric one way or another. I don't think it's going to take massive government mandates.

It's a question of how long it takes, though. And there's still the container shipping industry that is reluctant to convert to something other than oil. Government mandates, along with incentives, can speed that process up.

What about innovation and advancement in technology? Don’t you think that would drive the market towards green energy? I mean I may not be able to afford a Tesla now, but eventually cars like that will be cheaper. Look at how computers and cell phones went from being for the rich to everyone having one for cheap.

Right now the market is skewed by governments that heavily subsidize old technologies.

And I hate that. The government shouldn’t be picking winners and losers in the market.

What about it? I'm not going to dig for the article (though I've posted it here in the past) but prior to the start of the Iraq war (2002ish), a thinktank (that included George Shultz, so not a bunch of granola eaters) published a study that showed for far less money than we spent on Iraq, the government could have us off the oil teat in less than a decade. It's now been almost 20 years since we began occupying Iraq and only about 1.4 millon electric cars have sold in the US since 1999. Add in hybrid cars and you get another 5.4 million or so. 17 million new vehicles were sold in the US in 2019. So, electrics ain't dick.

And the free market isn't quite the driver of innovation that people like to claim it is. Computer technology advanced as fast as it did because the government poured money into it thanks to the space program (the space program, also, was the big driver in the development of things like cordless electric tools and rechargeable batteries). Oh, and the big driver for cellphone technology? The Israeli government. Because if some dumbfucker decides to blow up the place you're in, you don't have to try and find a payphone to let your loved ones you're okay. You also don't have to try and find one to call the police if you see some asshole with bombs strapped to his ass running down the street.

All of the innovation in things like electric cars has come directly or indirectly from government-sponsored programs. Even in cases like the Prius, where the cars were offered because the president of Toyota believed in the technology, not due to any government incentives, the basic technology for the vehicles was funded by the government (the US government during the Carter era paid for R&D on things like electric and hybrid electric cars).

Despite ample evidence (since the 1940s) that seat belts save lives (AKA customers), automakers didn't start putting them in all cars until they were mandated to do so. Customer surveys that said people were interested in cars with high fuel economy were ignored by the execs at the major automakers (who don't have to pay for their own vehicles, or gas, BTW).

Had other states adopted the zero-emissions mandate that CA had in the 90s (and then abandoned), we would have had electric cars on the road in greater numbers before now. In the mid-00s, Scientific American published an issue about getting us off of fossil fuels. One of the sections of the issue was dedicated to a pie-in-the-sky "give us unlimited political will to actually do this" to redesign the entire US energy system. The tab to get us off fossil fuel energy using technology available at the time (that's key, so no need to develop fusion or super-efficient solar panels)? Around $2 trillion.

We've seen what privatized energy companies do with their profits: Hand it out to the executives, rather than using it to upgrade their systems, thus leading to CA bursting into flames, and TX being a giant freezer. The simple truth is that given a choice between funding real innovation and stuffing the money in their pockets, most executives will opt for the latter rather than the former.

The Saudi Arabia thing is an utter shit sandwich. They're terrible people (the government and religious establishment, that is) and nobody should be friends with them. But from a harm reduction standpoint, it might be that the only thing worse than being their ally is ... not being their ally.

Where do you get this stuff? That's not at all why Continental Europe generally adopted the SECAM system instead of the American NTSC system for color television, nor why Britain went with PAL instead of NTSC.

The fact is, the American color television standard (NTSC) wasn't all that great. Electrical engineers and electronics technicians often joke that NTSC means "Never Twice the Same Color" and PAL (the British standard) means "Perfect At Last".

It's what W. Edwards Demmings claimed.

Ok. Well, he was a brilliant guy but he was off the mark here. SECAM / PAL were adopted for technical concerns, not (primarily) economics ones.

The fact is that SECAM and PAL were both superior formats to the North American NTSC system. Higher resolution AND higher color fidelity.

NTSC was kind of trash to be honest.

Fuck Saudi Arabia.

That country should have been isolated and severely punished immediately after 9/11. But American political and corporate interests (even to this day) unfortunately allow that reprehensible regime to continue.

Instead of sending 500,000 U.S. troops to a bullshit Iraq misadventure, they should have marched on Riyadh. I'm not joking.

P.S. - fuck Saudi Arabia.

Mike Pompeo was not a fan.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/20...criticizes-jamal-khashoggi-activist-rcna66973