Looks like VW again hedging its EV platform efforts.
https://electrek.co/2024/04/17/vw-launch-new-china-ev-platform-cut-costs-rival-byd/
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Many of my friends from high school are dead. The worst instance is the loss of two of my best friends that I spent countless hours of adventure with. Those dead also include the brothers, sons, boyfriends, and girlfriends of those close to my family.
In most cases, the immediate cause was drugs. It started with weed, alcohol, and cigarettes, and escalated into party drugs, psychedelics, and street drugs. Maybe half were ultimately killed by fentanyl, whether laced into other drugs, taken deliberately for a high, or used for something darker.
You might blame the Chinese drug lords trying their revenge for the Opium Wars, the Mexican drug lords pulling one over on the gringo, or the corrupt officials who let either of them push their poison into our country to begin with. But that doesn’t explain how these kids got into drugs in the first place. It doesn’t explain the insanity or the suicides.
You would be closer to the mark to blame rap music. It’s not polite to notice, but you couldn’t honestly deny it if you saw the fatal descent up close. Rap is almost deliberately concocted to lure kids into delinquent self-destruction. In the case of many of my friends, it did. And between the personalities and the producers, rap is much easier to blame on someone else.
But not everyone was into rap. You would also have to blame punk, alt-rock, and grunge. And anyway, most people don’t die when they listen to the wrong music. Nor does music explain the stories I’ve heard from the next school over where half the art scene is dead. Is art the problem? The subcultures were mostly an opportunistic infection, maybe just an aesthetic expression of the despair and confusion we didn’t know how to feel. Some kids didn’t entirely fit in, or fit too well into the wrong thing, and so they died. What’s weird is how many there were.
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That is a great essay. Thanks for linking it. (Just hitting “like” wasn’t sufficient.)
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In dissent, Alito wrote that the states amply demonstrated their right to sue. “For months, high-ranking government officials placed unrelenting pressure on Facebook to suppress Americans’ free speech. Because the court unjustifiably refuses to address this serious threat to the First Amendment, I respectfully dissent,” he wrote for the three justices in the minority.
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Yes, I’m not sure if it’s possible to maintain a functioning state when it’s free reign for anyone to get their messages algorithmically amplified. Dogmatism needs to go - and focus on long-term survivability of a state needs to come to the fore.
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The federal government should not be colluding with Facebook and Twitter and etc about deleting opinions and suspending users they disagree with, ie collude with social media big tech to silence conservatives and dissidents.
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What an amazing turnaround for “colluding”! When falsely attached to Trump, it was the very worst thing which could be done - for what, two years? All fake news. Also, by deciding that states lack standing to protect their citizens Free Speech rights against the federal tyrant - the first of all rights listed as being secured by the power granted by the Constitution - the First Amendment has been seriously demoted in its import, by a supposedly “conservative” court (sic).
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You can call it whatever name you like, I call it having an understanding of history.
I would rather live in China than the US with a total disregard for the Bill of Rights.
I am not sure I can distinguish between them. What about the Uyghur Muslims?
Why does every part of the world have issues with Muslims. They are a problem in Russia, Europe, SE Asia, Africa, India, Middle East, etc. Basically everywhere. Why does that religion have conflicts across the globe? At some point when you have conflicts with everyone else you are NOT the one being abused. You are the problem.
I had to get that in quick before the FBI arrests me for hate speech.
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Germans are being arrested for so called hate speech especially if you are a member of Alternative for Deutschland
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Not all states are worthy of long-term survivability. Some might argue none of them are, especially for the long term. As Keynes sagely observed, in the long run, we’re all dead — and that includes states. Typically, agents of the state and their fellow travelers are the ones most interested in the state’s long-term survivability.
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This story made me laugh. Where is the hate crime?
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More to the point, ?just what the hell IS a “hate crime”. ?Is broccoli a hate crime. The whole category is silly - a Far Left concoction to attack society.
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I have tracked our household expenses since around 2018. I don’t have it down to the exact shopping list, but our shopping list doesn’t change over a timeframe of 3 months. I pull out special items, but some things have been recategorized over time. We have also tried to reduce costs in various ways. Here are some results of 23 over 20:
Cable/Internet up 18.31%
Electric: Pretty much flat
Garbage up 88%
Nat gas up 53%
HOA up 8.9%
Netflix up 19%
Travel up 119%
Water up 64.53%
Groceries up 54% (This includes groceries and household supplies)
Tax up 110 percent (This is property tax on property that is not our home)
Home property tax and insurance up 22%.
Travel is two week long trips per year my wife and I take. The same location (Tennessee). The costs include the VRBO, food and gas. For housing we have had to downgrade the places we stay to try to limit expenses. Our own effort to do what the government calls substitution for CPI calculation.
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Nice job using VRBO instead of AirBnb!
Thanks for sharing your list.
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Was the selection of Archibald Cox as special prosecutor in 1973 illegitimate?
He was not approved or confirmed by the Senate.
During his confirmation hearing, Eliot Richardson promised to appoint a special prosecutor.
He appointed Cox as special prosecutor on his first official day as AG on May 25, 1973
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NFL Ordered to Pay $4.7 Billion in Sunday Ticket Case
A federal jury in California dealt a sweeping blow to the media rights model of America’s richest sport, siding with plaintiffs in a class-action antitrust lawsuit against the NFL over its out-of-market broadcasts and awarding $4.7 billion of damages to consumers of the league’s “Sunday Ticket” telecast package
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