Life in the last century or so has become far less conducive to oral history with travel and entertainment. It's much easier to maintain an oral history when live storytelling & music are practically the only form of entertainment and your extended family has lived in the same place for many generations. Still it's not that uncommon even today. I don't know much about my mothers family but I grew up hearing occasional stories and genealogy about the famous ancestor on my fathers side despite the fact that he died over a century ago on another continent. And boy oh boy did we get an education when we went back to visit the old family farm...found out I was related to him at least 2 different ways, as well as half the people on that stretch of road and the hotel owner in town. It seemed like there wasn't a person in town who couldn't tell you their connection to the only really significant person/even in the towns history.
I think this is probably very genre specific. I suspect the nonfiction and realistic fiction boy/manly/macho genres(outdoors, machines, fighting, and the like) may have been especially cannibalized by games/video. I don't recall seeing any of this stuff on my last trip to a physical bookstore. But on the fantasy/geeky side there are more great options than there have ever been, and, as a girldad, I can tell you that female main characters are tough to find.
It's wildly more convenient to read on a phone. I prefer the screen, form factor, and overall UX of an e-reader for extended reading sessions, but I haven't turned mine on in years because the phone is just sooooo much more convenient. Most e-readers don't fit in a pocket, and even if they do it's annoying to have to guess when I'll need it and carry the 2nd device. Whenever I have downtime....airport, doctors office, curbisde pickup, wife isn't ready to check out yet, lunch takes 5 minutes in the microwave....that phone/kindle for iOS is always ready to go. I probably do half my reading in 5-15 minute increments of formerly dead time. For a while I even tried switching to the e-reader whenever I sat down to read "for real", but even the relatively painless syncing process wasn't worth the minor UX benefits of the ereader. The phone is my least favorite way to read, but convenience is the one category where it absolutely mops the floor with e-readers(and paper for that matter).
You're not saying it's more convenient to read on a phone. You're saying that it's more convenient to bring your phone.
Sure, but we can all choose our habits. If I'm stuck waiting at a doctor's office, I will read on my phone like everybody else. But in all other situations, when you actively want to read, an e-reader is better.
I'm saying that it's more convenient for me to read on the phone in all situations I can imagine. Even at home....I just sat down, kicked up the recliner, and decided to read a noeel rather than the cookbook on the end table or putting something on TV. The phone is in my pocket and the e-reader is in another room, maybe in need of a charge, maybe in need of a sync. Maybe I should have thought about that before I sat down but I didn't. Sure I could choose to change my habits, but changing habits is difficult and inconvenient. And even once I've succeeded, the new habit takes more time and effort which is inconvenient. That inconvenience is modest and may be totally worth it for the (to your mind significant) benefits of an e-reader. But it is still an inconvenience. First world problems to be sure, but I will not expend 5% more effort for a 2% increase(my number, yours is a lot higher) in reading device quality, and I'm hardly alone in that decision.
From day 1 OPEC has been a loose association off frenemies that occasionally manage to work together for a while when enough of them are sufficiently hurting/greedy at the same time. They break due to producer rivalries every few years.
Oil in the ground is marginally more valuable than pie in the sky. There is nearly unlimited oil in the ground, but you have to find it, extract it, and show a profit after you subtract your expenses. Each step is harder than the last. Saudi oil is like $10 a barrel to produce. You can practically dig it up with a shovel. And it's high quality...a benchmark grade that a lot of the world's refineries are set up for. Much of Venezuelas oil is deep underwater and/or garbage quality. Think huge expensive deep water oil rigs and pumping high pressure kerosene into the ground to loosen up the tar/oil sands enough to get a nasty chunky sandy sludge out of the ground that a lot of refineries can't even process. And it doesn't help that they're under sanctions and don't domestically produce a lot of the equipment they need to extract their oil. And rampant corruption. Venezuela's massive reserves have equally massive challenges turning into profitable oil production.
The combined height of a blackhawk and a large jet is about 60ft. The combined length is a bit over 300ft, and since neither aircraft is unlikely to be level, some portion of that length gets contributed to their effective height while flying. Just given the size of the aircraft, I wouldn't be surprised if they can potentially overlap even if their altimeters are 100ft apart.
The old prison favorite of a lock in a a sock can very easily be fatal & probably weights 1/4 to 1/2 of a pound. I once reforged a ball peen hammer into a 1 handed warhammer. It was either a 12 or 16 ounce head, so quite light, really too light to get full power. It was shocking how much adding 6 inches to the handle increased the power. The spike end would easily do 1.5 to 2 inches through plate steel(maybe 3/16 or 1/8 inch) & even the sharp(90 degree) corners of the hammer head would pierce that plate if the strike wasn't flush and peel it back can opener style a half inch. It really takes very little mass to break bone provided you can get good speed, a relatively hard small impact point, and no armor/padding in the way. Skulls, hands, forearms, and shins are very vulnerable.
yea things are crazy now. We're in war mode but nobody knows why. We've been reliably profitable for a decade. And yet we're doing super high risk cost reduction projects that have significant risk of burning down the entire business and have already destroyed what used to be a very skilled and mature engineering team. I get the impression that's a fairly typical story now.
As long as they finally start adding plugin hybrids to the lineup. I'm itching to buy a PHEV tacoma, but it looks like midsize trucks will be the last form factor to get any decent options.
That's the plan once their battery factory in NC goes online.
Toyota's battery partner Idemetsu Kosan is also on the verge of mass producing solid-state batteries too, along with Mitsubishi's AGC along with CATL's founder TDK.
Japan's Public-Private Solid-State Battery R&D Strategy is a great template for how these kinds of research programs should be lead [0][1][2] but doesn't get enough limelight because most info is in Japanese
There is going to be no small PHEVs because it is cheaper to build small BEVs. Case example in Finland:
Cheapest new BEVs start at 25.000€ (Citroen e-c3, Nissan Leaf)
Cheapest PHEV Start at 33.000€ (Kia CEED, Renault captur)
People think PHEV makes things cheaper than BEV. But really mixing two powertrains is expensive and complex, and can only be fit in big cars. Plug-in hybrid is a luxury feature that allows you not worry about charging on the road.
> But really mixing two powertrains is expensive and complex, and can only be fit in big cars.
So "big, expensive, and complex", that Toyota's only been doing it since 2003. (Or 1997, in Japan).
Yes, it's a luxury to have both drivetrains and a sizable battery. But it's not a huge one. (using USA MSRP pricing, a Nissan Leaf starts at $30k, a Toyota Prius Prime PHEV starts at $34k).
There is a PHEV Prius which is not an SUV. It's not a small hatchback either, but yeah it's not a big car. And there is a PHEV C-HR too, which is more like a crossover than a proper SUV.
A small plugin hybrid doesn't make sense. It still needs room for both the ICE _and_ electrical parts. So the whole car is not scaling down, only the passenger compartment and luggage area.
On the contrary, a small plugin hybrid makes perfect sense. You get all the benefits of the EV (somewhere between 40 to 60 miles of non-gasoline driving, every night, with no emissions) and you get all the benefits of an ICE (easy road trips, two-minute refills, etc). And yes, it incurs the costs and maintenance of both, but traditional hybrid cars have already proved for decades now that it's possible to handle that well.
I love my Gen 2 Chevy Volt (had the Gen1 Volt before that, and a 2009 Toyota Yaris before that). If my Gen2 Volt died, I legitimately don't know what I'd do, most cars are a huge downgrade, there's only a few decent PHEV's still on the market.
Toyota should have been pursuing this strategy from the beginning, and I'm told their current Prius PHEV is pretty good, but all that means is that it's finally competitive with 2013-era Chevrolet. Chevy killing Voltec is probably their biggest strategic failure in the past decade -- they stopped it just a few years before those vehicles became popular.
I have a Chevy Volt (second gen). It looks like a normal car, has a 50-mile range on the battery and also has a gas engine. The passenger and luggage area are pretty normal, maybe the center rear seat isn't usable, but it isn't really usable in most sedans. I really want a previous-gen sized Ford Ranger or current Ford Maverick with the same battery range.
IMHO the Maverick hybrid is a phenomenal vehicle. I've averaged 460+ miles per tank of gas (13.8 gal and I don't run it to E). The 2025 looks better all around except IMHO the bigger screen.
I've watched a few review videos on the Maverick and while it does seem like the closest replacement for my (now totaled) Ford Ranger, I still wish it was a plugin/range extended drive train. It's nice not having to stop at a gas station except for when I'm on road trips 2-3 times a year.
The Prius Prime is a plug-in hybrid with about 45 miles of electric range and runs about $35k. It's not a "small" car, but by North American standards it isn't exactly large either.
Unfortunately that's 2.5x what I paid for my current Toyota hybrid (brand new), and while I know prices for cars have gone up a lot since 2019, it still makes no sense for me to get another Toyota if that's what's on offer.
I love the i3 but there were some substantial compromises.
On the manufacturing side: For weight and space reasons its the only non sports car to have ever been built with a carbon fiber monocoque which is pretty expensive compared to a traditional unibody. Extremely cool but not a realistic benchmark for cheap, mass-market vehicles.
User experience wise: Its a great car until the battery starts getting low. The range extender can't put out the same power as the battery so it goes into a fairly severe limp mode until it charges. The range extender is pretty inefficient in part because it just spins a generator instead of the wheels directly, so it only gets ~40mpg on gas. It also has an extremely small gas tank (2.4 gal) so the range extender only buys you another 120 or so miles before you have to stop and refill. It also only supports 50kWh charging so fast charging is not very fast at all.
I'm wondering where you experienced the "fairly severe limp mode" -- our REx can keep up with 75mph driving on a level highway, and will recharge the battery even at 65. Rain and hills have been able to overpower our REx, but never anything that prevented us from maintaining 55mph. Not really limping.
I grant that other climates and situations may have different experiences. We're on the west coast.
Not just the Chicken Tax but Obama era (revived under Biden) fuel efficiency standards that are ridiculous for vehicles under a certain weight. Those regs are more to blame than the Chicken Tax these days (and I'm NO fan of the Chicken Tax).
That would be amazing, except the manufacturer incentives to do so are not there :-( I have a Volvo XC60 T8 with an 11.6kWh battery, and apparently their new 18.8kWh battery fits in the same space - but Volvo doesn't support that as an upgrade, because obviously they would rather sell you a new car than a new battery.
Heh, I tend to agree with this. Unfortunately reality always seems to disagree. No matter how simple the job, _something_ new will go wrong that requires multiple trips to home depo, putting it back together & ordeing parts off amazon, or bodging together some sort of fix that's kinda trash but gets the stupid thing working again today.
Risk your life doing what? Eating? All food allergies are deadly. They might not have killed you yet, but every single exposure could be your last. And plenty of people, especially kids, are allergic to 4, 5, 6, 7 major allergens. Maybe you're familiar with adults who have grown out of all but 1 or 2 allergies & know what to avoid. Try feeding a kid who's allergic to soy, wheat, dairy and eggs. Heck, even just soy. Try to put together a week of meals without soy with our modern food supply. Spaghetti:soy. Burgers:soy. Ice cream:soy. Tacos:soy. Sandwiches:soy. The entire soup aisle:soy. What's left, drinking Ensure for every meal? Nope, that has soy _and_ dairy. Robust accurate food labeling is the only way people with several food allergies can eat a remotely normal and balanced diet without playing Russian roulette at every meal.
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