[PLUG-TALK] U.S. manufactured motherboards ... and growth

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Lofstrom <keithl at keithl.com> 


>Interesting planet you live on, Ted.  Yes, almost everyone will be using a
handheld mobile 24x7, conspiracy nonsense whispered into their earbuds ...

They already do THAT - where have you been?  What do you think Tik Tock is?

 >while they careen down residential streets at 50 mph in their 700
horsepower
(50 kilowatt) SUVs.  

Ah yes the old "it's the children" baloney argument.

Let's see now - in the Portland Metro they have been adding speed cameras
right and left.  That's why City of Portland wanted to take over Powell from
the State.  Supposedly it was to make it "better" but City has put zero
money into the road - they just added speed cams and dropped the speed limit
to increase ticket revenue.

And every other speed cam added in the last decade - NONE of them on
residential streets.  ALL on arterials that were already congested - and all
followed by speed limit drops on those roads.  Gotta make the congestion
worse so that drivers go nuts and forget about the cam and put the pedal to
the metal for the 3 blocks that are clear so they can be tagged for enhanced
revenue generation.

Eventually they won't even need the speed cams.  They will just pick the
speed out of your phone and mail you the ticket.

> Electric SUVs, charged by coal power generated out in flyover territory.
Solar photovoltaics won't charge the SUVs at night, but they will keep the 
> decorative windmills spinning when there is no wind.
> Thems the watts what worry me.

You do realize you don't actually have to charge your EV every single day,
don't you?  At least, not when you live in the city 4 miles from your job.
And your solar panels can generate power during the day and store it in a
battery for nightly charging of your EV.   There's a LOT of energy in solar
power. We just don't have the efficiencies yet up where they need to be.
But that is coming.

>I recently finished reading "Disconnected America: The Consequences of Mass
Media in a Narcissistic World" by Ed Shane.  Published in 2001, and >sitting
on a shelf in the PSU library ever since.  Shane claimed that laptop screens
narrow our thinking in time and breadth.

Well, 2000's laptop screens WERE pretty small and low-res after all.

But, they don't narrow our thinking as much as a 1800's preacher in a pulpit
did.  And check out Amazon's prices for 4K monitors.   5 years from now your
lappy won't have a 1080p screen anymore it will be 4K.  Can fit quite a LOT
of thinking in a 4K screen.

> Friends discuss the eventual replacement of the "tweet"
> by the one-bit "YO!".  That frees more bandwidth for automated
surveillance.

YO is what people wrote on the back of their Toyota light trucks in the
1980's.

> Yes Ted, I can "out-cynical" you.

That I doubt.

> However, I seem to be happier when I'm solving problems rather than
kvetching about them.

The problems aren't tech.  The problems are people and always have been.

Ted