SeeingRed [he/him]

It’s so frustrating to read anything about IMF loans because most summaries are all euphemistic economic jargon. Then you read past the summary and while the material is still opaque, they’ll have snippets where they explain in plain language what they want.

I assume this is an attempt to re-shore manufacturing, especially if as many of us expect, many countries choose to take the tarrif hit so that they can keep trading in their own currency between eachother.

It’s a strategic bet, bring home some manufacturing while hurting those who defy the empire. It’ll certainly reduce the availability of certain goods in the US as countries choose other markets. This likely would help to encourage some level of reshoring, or at least increase pressure from the ruling class to force more coups of other countries to force them back onto the dollar system.

Whether this will backfire or not will is something that is very hard to predict.

You too!

Flow batteries seem very promising, but the chemistry required needs more scale/external funding to be viable.

There were some thermal battery retrofits for coal power plants using carbon and steam that looked interesting in principal, though cost and logistics are not fully solved problems, and the round trip efficiency was rather bad compared to other storage methods.

There were also some molten metal batteries that have been working towards useful scale over the past decade or so. They had cheap and abundant matetial inputs and significantly long charge discharge.

There are many neat options out there. I think researching and building out each as they become viable would help to improve system resiliency and long term viability.

Its a vague statement. Not specific enough to be true or false.

We can be more specific by saying something like, “inventions and ideas will become refined and widespread when they are beneficial, useful, and practical.” Or maybe “necessity is a crucible for refining ideas and inventions.”

Even these are only roughly applicable as a generalization and a statement could only be said to be true when given specific conditions and detailed investigation.

For example, the basics of steam power were understood back in ancient Rome, but they didn’t make any steam engines to convert heat to useful work. Why? Because they didn’t need to. They also likely didn’t have the requisite industry to make and maintain them in any useful capacity. The engine was invented before it was necessary, but it didn’t become widespread until material conditions made it useful.

Even ideas like socialism have existed for a very long time, but the only place we see it kicking off (so far, inshallah) is within the places that need it the most. Was it invented in those places? No. Was it refined through those struggles? Of course it was.

I believe it could just be “awe” or “awestruck” with it’s roots in both awesome and awful. Though the context of the modern usage of “awe” is maybe not quite right.

The specific context here would be closer to breaking free of the simulacrum of the hyperreal (media, digital life, and our daily work) and seeing reality as it is. I’m not sure that there is a single word for this combined concept and feeling, though it would be a good one to know.

The hyperreal concept is interesting, though I admittedly don’t know much about it.

So often our whole world is just the things on the screen in front of us. Everything around us is filtered out and ignored.

However, every once in a while, that small piece of light ceases to be a world and becomes just a screen. The physical glass and electronics lose their status as a world and become just the physical objects. You now notice how they feel, how the borders of the device look, how it sounds to tap on it. The rest of the room comes into focus and your mind realizes that there is a world outside the room. The room, the screen, the whole world, shaped by other humans fills you with hope and sadness. You realize you live on just one spec of dust in a vast cosmos. But that spec is important and precious, because it is where you, and everyone else is. All these things are real, all have a story to tell. The people all have wants, fears, desires, but your interactions with them are superficial, mediated by tiny interactions, or just through the physical stuff they made which you interact with. You want to scream and cry from the sublime understanding of it all.

As quickly as it arrived, it is gone, the screen beckens you back and the world fades away into the background and you become immersed in the digital realm once again. Your eyes and brain filtering out everything but the screen, your fingers nothing more than a means of changing the screen, your body and mind, no longer important, is forgotten.

This is quite the change. I’m excited to see how it plays out. The one thing that bothers me is that the recommendations of the employee councils are not binding, but it’s far better than not having it at all. Hopefully in practice any company that goes against employee desires will be penalized in some tangible way.

The way I see it is that at least 4% of the workforce will have a say in how the companies are run, and those 4% will be elected by the other 95%. Good law, will probably be popular.

It was always projection. It’s honestly comical how often that is the case.

Truly aspirational!

Hope you have a nice week as well!

Depends on how your local roads/side walks/pathways are maintained. If the snow is cleared, e bikes work just fine, but your range will be hurt a bit. A bad headwind will also mean your range goes down a lot (wind seems worse in the winter where I am, but that could be some sort of confirmation bias). The times I’ve biked through Blizzard conditions/extreme wind and cold I was very glad to have the e assist on the bike. Those days are rare though, and the primary consideration in my mind is how well things are maintained the rest of the year.

That being said, a path that hasn’t been cleared in days is basically unusable for any bike. Maybe a fat-tire bike could work, but I don’t have experience with that.

In terms of space, I use my bike all the time so I’ve made space for it in my apartment.

Maybe is should ask, what type of ebike are you looking to get? There is quite a range of types. Mine is basically just a normal bike with a motor assist.

I’ll second the boox line of products. No need to go for the color e ink either for it to be very functional as an android tablet. I’d love to have a color one at some point, but I’m happy enough with the basic one and it’s lasted me quite a while.

If you get one with the pen it is quite nice for note taking as well.

That being said, if you just want to read e books, it’s not the cheapest option.

I really dislike ads, so usually I have them blocked, but not all my devices have it done yet. Usually it’s just capital trying to get me to buy things so I just scroll past, but just over the weekend it was scary how quickly ads relating to Iran’s retaliatiatory action started popping up with the obvious slant you would expect in the west. There seems to be a concerted effort to start beating war drums… This is not including the horrific ads I’ve seen coming from Zionists over the last half year with blatantly genocidal language. I even reported those ads and nothing came of it of course.

I guess to sum up: ads can and are used as political tools to shape ideology. Yet another reason to get everyone you know on an ad blocker.

So 6 years to project start. Then just a few more years for completion. All in we are looking to a decade out for project completion +/- a few years.

Meanwhile, in Canada they can’t even get a timeline or funding for a single line on the most obvious corridor. And the second most obvious corridor has no timelines, and is only a study of feasibility at this time.

I think more important than co-op organizational structure would be a question of work place democracy. Are the workers given say over how their work is undertaken, do they have power over decisions? Ultimately under capitalism we are limited by the need to make enough profit to reproduce the business. The form that business takes when given those constraints can only be on some level exploitative.

The best you can do as an owner or part owner in the case of coops is to listen to your employees needs and compensate them as much as possible given the constraints of the budget.

The problem, as always, with capitalism is that exploitation goes into overdrive when the goal is to make a profit above the cost of production (including labour inputs) and this there is pressure to keep wages down and force longer hours.

If we had an unbiased look at his employees perspective and the finances, we could judge if he is engaging in profit making, or just earning enough to keep the lights on and to keep product moving. We can only take him at his word at this point.

Are there issues with this format, probably, but in the final analysis, will another pro communism propagandist be beneficial for the cause?

Mine haven’t started up yet thankfully, but I expect them to be early this year.

Definitely interesting to see. I’d be curious how this compares to the total wheat trade between the two countries and other trading partners, how that’s changing over time, and why it’s specifically happening now. Is this due to old agreements being unnecessary due to increased domestic production? Is this due to the global market favouring wheat purchases from other countries? Is there just less demand due to some other reason? There is the throwaway line about China being able to source from others, but no indication of who or why.

Obviously this is just Bloomberg so they’re not going to dig into these sorts of things as they only care about the changes in prices for the sake of investors.

It’s so nice to read these missives. They are so inspiring and the positive messages feel so genuine. The challenges are acknowledged, but they are not used in a decisive way.

This is a great resource. Definitely saving this for later.

It’s interesting to see the World Bank data with increasing share of income for the poorest segments of their society.

The data older than 2010 though shows the trends were not always so positive. Glad to see that they were able to make a turnabout and are on a good pathway right now. Long way to go, but their plans have paid off and things are on the up.