Myth Made Man
Sunday, March 24, 2024
Escaping Natural Necessity through Enslaving Others
Saturday, March 23, 2024
"Technology" Demons; Cain and Prometheus
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Government Chips: Feds "Invest" in Moribund Tech Company
Wednesday, February 28, 2024
EV Flop?
I've been following the EV story since the early 2000s. I used to hang out on stock market message boards back then and closely followed the drama of a Canadian company called Zenn Motors who was partnered with a company in Texas called EEStor who claimed to have a revolutionary solid state hyper-mega-capacitor with immense energy density. Zenn Motors entire business was hyping the possibility that the EEStor energy storage system was going to be demonstrated any day now to pump their stock.
Eventually I got bored of that and just moved on. It was an interesting lesson though. There are lots of companies like that which make a living off greed and the good nature of "investors" who hope they've found the next big thing and will get obscenely rich from a $500 "investment". There are oil and gas companies like that, gold and silver miners, and many tech and biotech companies like that as well.
The interesting thing about that story is Zenn and EEStor zeroed in on the main problem with electric cars at the very inception of the EV mass market. The EEStor vaporware addressed the problems with chemical batteries: slow to charge, limited lifespan, low energy density. If the EEStor gizmo existed, EVs would be a no brainer replacement for ICE engines, but it doesn't.
Currently it's possible to build a pretty good car with lithium-ion batteries, but they have limitations and look to be relegated to niche use cases. Lots of engineering time and resources are currently being wasted on things like battery powered busses and trucks and heavy equipment, but that's probably at least partly funded by government funny money and all that effort will go into the trash.
One of the things that's very interesting about EVs is the original sales pitch of their simplicity = low cost and higher reliability did not pan out at all. A well made and maintained gasoline or diesel engine is probably going to outlast multiple $20,000 batteries, motors, and power electronics in a typical EV. Even though it has dozens or hundreds of moving parts, the process of manufacturing and assembling such a complicated mechanical contrivance is far superior to the latest electric tech crapola.
Anyway, the reason I'm writing on this topic at all is the EV flop story is totally mainstream at this point. Everybody and their 80 year old mom knows it didn't work out as originally sold. The hype and propaganda and PR engine for that industry is out of gas apparently. Governments are still pushing EVs especially in Europe, but the audience for the government sales pitch dwindled to a handful of fanbois at this point.
The EV story has lots of similarities to COVID vaccine sales techniques. EVs were massively over-hyped and the sales pitch and reality were separated by a vast gulf. Eventually people can't help notice they were lied to. The reality of EVs is they're probably about as resource and energy intensive as ICE vehicles--possibly worse, and for typical drivers they're far more expensive and less capable and practical overall.
The EV topic isn't as politically partisan as COVID vaccines, though. For a while the COVID vaccine topic was dominated by shrieking leftist retards. Eventually most people figured out the vaccines didn't really work that well and only the most strident paid lefty oriented shills were left defending and pushing them. With the EV topic though, people seem capable of making an assessment based on observation and calculation instead of environmentalist hype.
People often make car purchases based on a fairly well thought out set of requirements, features offered by different cars, prices, total cost of ownership and the like, so the hype only works on some subset of the population.
Saturday, February 3, 2024
Neocon War on America
China is increasing its oil business in Iraq.
Every day we pay for the Iraq war in the form of inflation. The dumb war cost trillions of dollars and even continues now, as does the undeclared war in Syria. All of those wars are for Jews and Israel. The cost of those wars is a significant fraction of the GDP of the US over the past several years and there's absolutely nothing to show for it.
The United States is such a massive, dominant, and wealthy country that the mega-failures like the War in Iraq are just forgotten in a matter of days really and the people who planned and promoted the war remain in positions of influence and control.
US citizens are tax cattle for people who hate them and hate the US. Some sack of shit like Bill Kristol imagine's he's superior... why exactly? He's a good con man and practiced liar, but everything that dude has promoted for decades has been a failure.
If the US had purged all those neocons and neolibs back in 1990, the world would be a significantly better place overall. A constructive relationship with the former USSR, middle eastern countries, and the rest of the world would have propelled humanity forward. Instead con men, liars, psychopaths and thieves plundered the US treasury and killed millions of people.
Tuesday, January 16, 2024
EVs and Idiocracy
It's been pretty cold here in Northeast Ohio for the past few days. It's single digit temperatures overnight and 10-15F during the day lately. In the central part of the country, like in Illinois and Iowa it's been sub-zero degrees F for a couple of days. In Canada it's been brutally cold.
A number of videos of Tesla owners struggling with the cold have been circulating YouTube. If the battery is depleted on an EV in very cold weather, it's a nightmare scenario to charge the thing. If the battery is not warm enough, it will not accept a charge. If it's marginal, the normal 45 minute recharge time can extend to hours. Since a bunch of owners end up in the same situation at the same time, the Tesla supercharging locations are packed with bricked vehicles and tow times go up to 9 hours.
One of the common reactions in the videos is the owners blame themselves for not correctly planning or jumping through the correct sequence of hoops to keep their $50,000+ car operational in the cold weather. If you have an ICE car how much time do you devote to keeping your car in working condition in the winter? Do you even have to think about your car at all? I don't. My car is 16 years old and will probably make it one more year before it succumbs to rust. If I could magically fix all the rust issues, I might get 2 more years of life out of it before the trans or engine goes out. I jumped in the car at 0F and went to the YMCA a couple of days ago and didn't ever wonder about the range, or if the thing would start, or how much heat I could use, etc...
Anyway, I think EVs are part of an overall trend toward more complexity and associated declining reliability, and quality of life. There's really just not enough smart people to make all our electronic garbage work really well. I've noticed this phenomenon in my work as a software dude all through my career. Everything from operating systems, to compilers, to build systems has gotten more complicated, bigger, and has more capabilities than ever, but it's all pretty shitty.
Everyone lives just to feed the system and it keeps getting hungrier. I wonder how long this is all going to last.
Friday, December 29, 2023
Chronic Wasting Disease
I recently got interested in the disease that's plaguing disease called "chronic wasting disease". The story that circulates the media about the disease it occurs in wild deer populations and is "spreading" around the USA.
However, after just a little research, the story I find is CWD originated in captive deer populations. It specifically started in Colorado back in 1967, then kept cropping up in various farmed deer and elk populations ever since.
Researchers published "Alterations in gut microbiota linked to provenance, sex, and chronic wasting disease in white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)" (link to article) in 2021. It's pretty interesting. Their theory is the feed and high population density on deer farms--yes they farm deer--creates the conditions for CWD.
Anyway, I'm going to keep reading up on it.