Recently, whoever owns the Dodge car brand announced that the brand would stop making sports cars in the near future. They will discontinue their line of muscle cars in favor of electric cars. Many other car makers have promised that they will soon cease making cars with internal combustion engines. Reminiscent of the Soviet five year plans, they are promising to be right with Gaia in five years. Like those five year plans this is unlikely to happen, barring societal collapse.
The main reason this will never happen is that electric cars are and always have been a stupid lie against practical reality. The stupidity lies in the fact that at the end of every green scheme lies a smokestack. There is no such thing as renewable energy so that leaves the only way we know to get usable energy, breaking atoms. The lie is that these new cars are better in some way. They are not. In fact, electric cars are inferior at all of the things that make normal cars useful.
This short post summarizes the more obvious problems with eclectic vehicles, but you could write a book on the topic. The cost of ownership is significantly higher to the user and even higher for society, if one thinks mountains of old batteries is a problem that society should mitigate against. Then there is the fact that they will forever be impractical for most people. The biggest problem is they will require trillions in infrastructure changes that will never happen.
Like the eBook, the electric car is a solution in search of a problem. In fact, the eBook is the place to start in order to grasp the lunacy of the EV. Deliberately swept down the memory hole is the fact that the same people who say the electric car is the future also said the eBook was the future. The claim was the reduced cost of making an eBook versus a real book would end printing entirely. The publishers would simply abandon the practice of printing books.
There is the first comparison to ponder. Hidden in the selling of the eBook idea was the claim that you would be forced to burn your paper books in favor of Amazon deciding what you could read. It was a form of the old communist line about capitalist selling the communists the rope they would use to hang them. In this case, the greed of the publishers would be used to enforce the eBook dream. Behind every radical project are men holding pistols, waiting for their chance.
We see an advanced version at work with electric vehicles. First the regime rolled out incentives for battery makers and car makers. Then they rolled out incentives for people to buy these cars. There are incentives for municipalities to install charging stations and find ways to encourage EV use. Now we are into the stick phase where car makers are getting bullied to stop making normal cars. The regime enjoys the carrot and stick approach, but they most really enjoy the stick.
In both the eBook and the eVehicle, we saw form up what amounted to a religious community in support of these novelties. When the eBook hit the scene, the same people who swore Starbucks made great coffee suddenly decided that they could only read off a device. It was the future! The same people who swore eBooks were the future are now saying the same thing with electric cars. They are the same people who swore masks and standing on one foot would prevent Covid.
The electric car and the electric book are two examples of the other side of the moral panic, which is the moral crusade. Both moral the panic and the moral crusade arise from the same desire among the people swept up in them. They are seeking both salvation and a sense of security. On the one hand, they want to be secure from whatever it is that is causing the panic, like climate change or Covid. On the other hand, they want to be seen as a good person, one of the elect.
For a very long time, almost all of human history in fact, religion was the vessel into which these aspects of belief were contained. Religion told the faithful that as long as they were pious they were going to be okay. Maybe that meant an afterlife or maybe it meant justice in this life. If they followed the rules, they would be safe. It also promised a little extra for those who were particularly pious. The public act of piety has been with us since Gobekli Tepe for this reason.
It turns out that reason, appeals to nature and historical inevitability are poor replacements for the supernatural. In the Christian era, the faith supplied all of the spiritual security one needed, because it truly sated the desire. It made clear what one could expect from salvation. Ideology, on the other hand, ironically enough, is like an opioid, in that it provides an initial euphoric satisfaction, but then an insatiable craving for even more of what it promised.
It turns out that we are plagued by these moral crusades and panics because the people behind them are like drug addicts. For them, modernity is an opium den in which the are condemned to chase the dragon for eternity. It is why during Covid so many of them had that same dead expression in their eyes you see from addicts. With their mask firmly on, they were in the only space where they were both free from the agony of desire and the ecstasy of the narcotic high.
Now that the high priest of the electric vehicle has revealed himself to be nothing more than an opportunist, the religion of the EV has been shaken. The people who told us the electrical car was the vehicle to spiritual satisfaction are now turning on the idea as a way to smite the evil Elon Musk. Of course, practical reality will eventually reduce the idea to a niche item, like the eBook. Somewhere, someone like Elon Musk is thinking about the next moral crusade to monetize.
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South Park Smug Alert is perfect example.
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Imho the elites know the electric car is bogus. It’s just a back door way to get Americans into public transport., to get our energy use per capita down to European levels.
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Frankly, I do not think they have a plan. Like the mobs wearing masks, they get swept up in these things, but in their position they get to be the high priest, rather than one of the people in the pews. That and it pays well. Global commerce is now tuned to monetize social fads. They see something picking up steam and they rush to front of it in order to profit. Once the fad ends, it is off to the next cause.
The universal mistake of all right-wing politics is to assume agency and reason to the other side.
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It’ll be as you say, Z: all things to all people! A grift, a corporation, and a cult.
It will end badly too.
Good point. The other thing to notice about many of the fads, cultural and commercial, is that they are all the pipe dreams of the 60s. They had to change the world. They had to replace the evils of industrialism and capitalism with Gaia beneficence and equity.
On their way out they are going to make it happen one way or another. The Gen Xers who joined in are just money grubbers. The millenials and zoomers behind them, are true believers to an extent far surpassing the coastal elite hippies. The demographics and outcome of Fetterman’s election are signs of what they are going to do.
We are dealing with fanatics and reality departed weirdos. The 60s and its utterly stupid moralizing ideas and the imbecilic fanatics who believe and proselityze them are with us until some powerful apostates prepared to make Kent State look like child’s play step up and restore sanity and order.
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They don’t have a plan, but they have ideas. Well that’s probably giving them too much credit. Vague aspirations maybe? Pushing vast numbers of people into public transport is definitely among their many aspirations. There is no way an electric car future could possibly exist with a 1 for 1 exchange for gas vehicles. Not form an energy deliver standpoint, or an infrastructure standpoint. Even the extraordinarily dense people advocating for EVs have to realize this.
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I think they work from a vague image of a future where everyone lives in buildings made of glass a stainless steel. Everything is clean and neat and most important, free of all coercion. I touched on this in the Monday post. Radicalism, at its heart, is the dream of escaping the human condition, which is a world free of coercion.
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“Frankly, I do not think they have a plan. Like the mobs wearing masks, they get swept up in these things”
The end users — i.e., the lesbian sociology professors driving EVs to campus to lecture on the oppression of the heteronormative patriarchy — may not have a plan, but other people most definitely do.
The FedGov/EPA and the engineering staffs of GM and Ford are absolutely making deliberate decisions to replace internal combustion vehicles with EVs. Billions upon billions are being invested in this decision, and billions of dollars of tax credits and offsets are being granted.
Now, these people are not entirely stupid, they know as well as we do that the grid cannot support every ICE vehicle being replaced with an EV. They know that EVs have shorter range and less practicality. They know EVs cost more and rely upon the the availability of scarce resources like lithium. They know EV batteries eventually deplete and need to be recycled or disposed of.
If they know all of this and persist anyway, then exactly what is their plan? It logically cannot be to make personal transportation cheaper and more widely available to everyone.
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Those people planning to replace IC engines are doing so because the boss said to do it. the boss is doing it because that is the current grift. If wind powered cars became a thing on twitter, look for some Elon Musk to promise that sail cars are the future. GM will then get on that grift.
Spiritual movements are not driven by practical concerns. This is a category error all right-wing movements seem to make.
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Yes. They don’t want you driving electric cars. They don’t want you driving at all. They want you in your pod eating bugs or dead. Preferably dead.
I have a friend who mortgaged his home to buy an EV and install the charger in his garage. I attempted to sway him away from the purchase but, like the Zman points out, it is a religion to these people. He used to brag about his car and inform me of all of the benefits of EVs. Every time I speak to him now he is noticeably less enthusiastic about his Tesla. It turns out the laws of thermodynamics are a bitch.
The stupid burns.
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How many sets of tires has he gone through on his Tesla?
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At least one set in less than two years and basically only going to and from work. He no longer informs me of his adventures with his Tesla.
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“laws of thermodynamics are a bitch”
Truer words are rarely spoken. I’d also add the laws of gravity, inertia, etc.
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This is why they always want to “tax” co2 rather than ban it all together. That way the rich can keep using it. If filling the gas tank takes $500, we can’t afford it. But the wealthy can afford to just pay the 500 bucks.
If hydrocarbon fuel is becoming more scarce, or at least harder to get out of the ground and refine, increased use of public transportation would inevitably happen anyway. Accelerationism is a weird mindset.
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Instead of posting about the con-men and crazies in regards to this belief in all things good with electric universe, read James Kunstler;s piece on his experiences with his home system. Decent fellow that wanted to embrace it all for the right reasons for self sufficiency. After this I will never be part of any of this.
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/its-not-working/
Short read
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I do not care about him or his troubles. Sorry.
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It was not about him personally but the obvious lunacy and stupidity of anyone embracing this nonsense. Actually I’m astonished with his honesty.
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It’s well worth reading as it points out the problems with so-called renewables. As Z man says, there’s a smokestack at the end of all renewable energy, and often a dependency on hard-to-find rare earths. Renewable energy is a hashish dream.
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“there’s a smokestack at the end of all renewable energy,”
The True Believer could care less, though. It is pretty well settled that much recycling does more environmental harm than good (primarily through wasted energy) but that hasn’t caused a moment of reflection. “I’m saving the planet” is such hubris and such a big dopamine hit that no amount of logic and facts will triumph. Pol Pot’s high body count simply was proof of his righteousness and these folks are no different.
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“The regime enjoys the carrot and stick approach, but they most really enjoy the stick.”
Reminds me of the Al Capone line: “You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun.”
Sorry, this was meant to reply to the main article.
” It pisses me off because I should have known better.”
— Lol, I guess calculators were widely in use when he got the solar system installed back in…2013.
The worst part of electric is the price tag. The average electric car costs over 50,000 dollars, and the usual middle class strategy of getting cars used is now closed, as the most expensive part, the battery, only has a ten year lifespan. Say bye to the teenager who leaves the house and buys a couple thousand dollar clunker for his first taste of independence, or a family with 5 kids getting a beater van for 10k and running it to the ground. Now everyone has to pony up for a car that is about 1/3 the price of their mortgage.
As for Uber-like autonomous driving, good luck putting car seats in those things, or driving to Grandma’s across the state, or any other thing your average family with small kids wants to do. The anti-natal effects of this will dwarf the drop in fertility caused by car seats.
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The EV is a great example of Chesterton’s fence. Once you go through the list of problems of the EV and what would be required to solve them, the IC engine starts to make a ton of sense. It turns out that the internal combustion engine was the good enough and cheap enough solution to a series of problems with regard to replacing horses as our primary transportation. Lots of people tried alternatives to the IC engine and those failed the fitness test.
Now, I am not categorically opposed to EV’s. They may have a niche. I cannot think of one off the top of my head, but maybe in an environment where you would not want car exhaust.
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Can I stick up for EVs? Thanks.
We are still in the development phase. It’s only been 10 years or so that EVs have been “a thing”. I agree that the gov’t is astroturfing demand of EVs, and the people touting our electric future are purple-haired progressive gaia-worshippers. It makes one reflexively opposed to it.
And yes, there is a smokestack behind every EV. At least for now. But the whole reason for electric vehicles is to reduce emissions. Cars are a good start. The brightest minds are not in politics, but they are in technology. We are in a transition phase where we need the dirty energy to power the clean, and it seems ridiculous, but eventually – and this is a worthy goal – ALL energy will be clean(ish). I don’t like the messengers, but I do like the goal. The world has 8 billion people so we’re bound to have smart people who can figure this out.
I would prefer a hybrid approach for now…EVs or hybrid vehicles for normal people/commuters. For people who need trucks, internal combustion engines. But keep the ICE limited to people who need the range and the towing capacity. Put the gas stations in out-of-the-way areas. I hate gas stations anyway. (The fewer Wawas and QTs the better. And imagine a commute free of diversity stops.) There is no reason to be draconian here. There is plenty of oil left. In time, somebody might (big MIGHT) solve the battery issue(s). But I see no reason we can’t “encourage” normal commuters to have vehicles that are > 50 mpg.
Also, I like e-books. Anyone who has moved more than once knows what I mean.
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I agree they have their niche and I wouldn’t propose banning them, they are really not a solution to any real problem.
As long as we need other oil based fuels, we’re going to get gasoline. That gasoline is not going to be pumped down a well, it’s going to be sold and burned.
Electric cars, according to Jalopnik, are already more expensive to power than an ICE.
Article “Driving 100 Miles in an EV Is Now More Expensive Than in an ICE”
EVs are nowhere near as efficient as EV evangelists like to say they are. They love to concentrate on the main motor they ignore all the other losses in the system. When all is said and done, it’s probably under 50% efficient.
The price is likely to increase dramatically of both the EV and the electricity necessary to power them. Barring some major battery breakthrough, the cost of batteries has nowhere to go but up. The price of electricity has nowhere to go but up. We would have build hundreds of new power plants to keep up with this demand and I don’t think we’re going to do that in the near future.
Without a major nuclear breakthrough, there is little chance all electric will be “clean” or maybe not even clean-ish, whatever that means (I’m assuming it means like natural gas, lower overall emissions). Now we’re going to be adding many millions of new stoves and don’t think oil heat would escape the green-wienies, though it’s possible heat pumps would be more efficient than burning natural gas or heating oil directly. BUT, it would still mean terawatt hours of additional electric load.
What are all us city denizens going to do about charging these things? We ain’t got garages.
Electric vehicles have unfortunately entered into what I call the “salad trap”. As we get poorer, and our capitalists mismanage stuff more, what should be a worthy alternative gets priced out.
Consider: everyone should be eating salads and veggies instead of subs and burgers and fried chicken right? So why is a salad priced >= than a factory-farmed meatwich at any given restaurant? Given the corpulence and unhealthiness of Amerifats, we should be subsidizing and promoting veggies, so that if a burger costs $3, the salad should always be priced less. And I’m not talking some sh*tty iceberg lettuce abomination. At least a Caesar salad would do the trick.
Same for EVs. I understand the battery is expensive, but why can’t we just mass-produce 1982 VW Rabbits with electric engines? Why do we need all the cameras and sensors and gobbledygook? I think we could manufacture a decent EV for $10k. But our capitalists instead push SUVs and trucks, which now have comparable prices to EVs. And you know what Amerifats will go for…
As for the charging issue, yeah I haven’t figured out the solution for city residents without garages. I just assume everyone has a 2-car garage like myself. But Tars, we can’t just hold back progress because of your home choice!
The question that never gets answered is why are we wasting resources making the EV as good as the current cars? Let us assume we make the great leap in material science that allows for fast charging batteries that do not also fast discharge in an accident. Let us also sort out how we reconfigure the power grid to support EV’s. We also conquer the environmental impact of getting the material to make and dispose of batteries. Finally, we solve the geopolitical problems with sourcing the needed materials.
Where are we? We end up with cars that sound different and look weird. That is it. For the normal person, nothing has improved about this item in terms of its utility. In fact, it opens the door to more control over their life. The environment is not cleaner, energy demand is not diminished, efficiency is not improved. To what end?
I drive a BMW i3 hybrid, has a range of maybe 60/70 miles electric after that its petrol generator can be used (or before if the battery is below 75%), I can use public chargers but never really bother, I just use petrol on the long trips
Anyway I bought it for €18K about two years ago, so far I calculate I have saved over €5K in fuel costs
I don’t care about global warming or what ever Greta is calling it these days. I just hated paying €1.30 a litre for Diesel, it was €2.10 a litre a while back, so the savings continue to accumulate
In Ireland the government want 100% of new cars sold to be EVs by 2030, but it won’t happen IMO, they will never build the grid or the generating capacity to charge them all
You can all hate me if you want 🙂
Underground iron mines are generally run using electric trains or cars / golf carts (CO2 exhaust + enclosed spaces = dead canaries/ miners). Works pretty ok.
There are zero (and will always be zero) electric Komatsu / Volvo/ Euclid heavy lift dump trucks for the real above ground work.
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I laugh at the electric big rig stuff because were sorted this problem long ago. Electric locomotives exist and have existed for a long time. In order to make them work it requires massive amounts of electricity and the locomotive to be attached to the grid at all times. This worked for human transport too, as in subways and busses in urban areas. In other words, the battery problem was solved by a very long extension cord.
Putting an electric motor under load is pretty much the same as a dead short. This drains batteries quickly. Anyone who has used battery powered drills knows this. Pushing your car around is one thing. Pushing around a 40 ton rig is another.
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I’m pretty sure diesel electric trains are still a big thing. The “prime mover” on the train is a diesel engine which generates the electricity to run the train. A quick google search shows they are most of America’s train fleet.
On the east coast you see a fair number of electric locomotives. It is more common in Europe. In fact, this is why Russia is attacking the Ukraine power grid. They are knocking out train service to the front. Once you get away from cities then it is diesel-electrics.
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“Putting an electric motor under load is pretty much the same as a dead short. This drains batteries quickly. Anyone who has used battery powered drills knows this.”
And yet, I’ve not used a plug in drill for a decade, only battery. Heck, I had my last house remodeled and the workmen used no plug-in electrical devices, only battery drills and saws. Of course, they had a charger plugged in and a couple of spare batteries to switch off to.
The niche being filled here was obvious, the corded devices restricted movement and that caused excess time spent on the job, hence increased costs.
Similarly, EV’s will be used where they are more efficient.
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No there are a few Volvo (I think) heavy lift dump trucks, you can look it up on youtube, in some places it can work because of the difference in weight of the loaded and unloaded truck can be used to charge the battery using regen breaking
Electric vehicles do indeed have a niche, except it’s mostly not on earth, which I think explains Musk’s interest in them.
An electric car makes a lot of sense on Mars, where an ICE isn’t an option. This is just Elon’s way of getting the taxpayers to fund his R&D.
I’m guessing this also explains his Boring Company venture. Radiation makes living on the surface of Mars an uncomfortable proposition, so living underground is a necessity. It’s good of Los Vegas and other cities to step up to the plate and fund Musk’s efforts in this direction.
I find when considering the motive behind Musk’s projects, a good first question to ask is, “Of what use will this be on Mars?”. Most of them make a lot more sense for Mars than they do on earth.
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Musk would do better spending time developing an alternative rocket propulsion system for his “trip to Mars”. Of course, you can’t sing the siren song doing the hard work of solving the basic problems. Engineering is sooo boring.
The only alternative that might work is some kind of Nuclear rocket, not really something a private company does unless NASA is helping
Musk’s Mars rocket might launch (and explode) next month
Mark P. Mills and Michael Kelley, both accomplished engineers, have gone through the cost the project would entail. The transition won’t happen because it can’t happen.
I do think the issue is a good one for determining who is fit for a position in the new regime. Anybody who adores Musk, (Shapiro, Rubin, countless others), as some advanced capitalist and genius with an alchemical ability to see science that nobody else can, is out. Anybody who calls BS on that project and points out the patent stupidity and un-scientific and anti-engineering reality statement Musk makes, (Mills, Kelley, P. Luckey, the Toyota family, Peters … …), is suited for a seat. Opportunists like Mary Barra who correctly called BS, then signed up for the subsidies and joined the chorus of civilizational wrecking liars are out too.
I think my favorite cognitive dissonance by Musk the subsidy truffle hound is the idea that he will terraform Mars, yet we need his EEVs, solar panels and battery packs to save the earth. Can’t we just terraform the earth too?
I suspect part of Musk’s motivation for buying Twitter is that powerful people and rising voices started openly criticizing him. When “Fossil Future” was released Peter Thiel and Palmer Luckey were a part of the book release promotion. A rule in Silicon Valley is that you do not criticize the top dogs and you do not call out their grift. The negative implications of the EEV/solar-panel/battery-farm grift are so catastrophic both economically and ecologically that they started challenging Musk to debates and subtly but openly calling out his game.
“It seems that what Elon is really good at is finding a business that is about to be the beneficiary of huge government subsidies and building something around it.” – Palmer Luckey
In any case, metallurgical coal, copper, nickel, aluminum and other stocks are doing great. The EEV scam is a great opportunity to make money off of the massive under supply of materials required to make it happen. We are going to need a lot of diesel to dig up the copper that doesn’t exist in sufficient quantities and a lot of met coal to smelt the stainless steel and aluminum to make those cars. Perhaps this is the path to the first DR person with a wad of money to help the effort. Profit on the way up, short it on the way down. The regime has weaknesses that can be exploited.
Another funny thing about Musk is the women in his life. He sure picks the diversity loving wokesters. His wife. His daughter – not picked but you get what I mean. The most aggressive diversity sermonizer I have seen, and I have worked with many, is his COO of SpaceX. I bet Musk believes in diversity when it gives him political cover and inside connections to government contracts that meet diversity goals.
We don’t need a new elite to form a new regime. We need an elite period. America got Chalmath Palapeepeepatapeetyah and Japan has the fourth generation of Toyotas. The next regime will have to learn some lessons and create something that is stable and honors tradition without ossifying.
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I don’t disagree with the observations that Musk is an opportunist. His real genius probably lies in his ability to exploit those opportunities. As for Twitter, I’m still in a wait and see mode, but he has certainly done a great service to our side by exposing the corruption involved. Much like Trump, he’s not perfect and may not really be Our Guy, but he has helped in his own special way.
Where I am an adamant Musk supporter is in his rocket work. I don’t think he’s given enough credit for what he’s done there. Not only has his systems revolutionized the field, but his total “engineers” approach to problem-solving is a fresh slap in the face to NASA and the US government. In my mind, as long as he keeps the rocket work going, I’ll always give him a pass on the other stuff.
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I don’t know enough about his rocket contribution and its value. I accept it is that good.
What we need to caution against is giving people a pass for doing massive damage to society with one hand and doing something potentially valuable with another.
Musk validating the CAGW and energy transition premises is a massive negative and that project will do massive damage to our society. Musk is an engineering leader. The setback he is making to nuclear energy by saying preposterous lies that solar energy can make the same amount of energy on the same amount of land as a nuclear reactor is hugely damaging. The public admires him and believes this and inspired youth grow up in a lie. The damage that does cannot be underestimated and it cannot be ignored.
As for space, the jury is still out for me. I don’t see how humans on Mars are good for us. At what cost and for what benefit? It hasn’t been explained to me. If it has been explained I would love a pointer to the good analysis.
What I can foresee in our use of space as a net good is if it is extremely practical. That is to say, if it gives us access to abundant resources at a net profit then I am all for it. It would seem that robotics used in space to find and mine materials of use to us on earth at a profit is an endeavor worth pursuing.
So far, I hear talk of space tourism and being an interplanetary species so that kids can interact on Stitch between Mars and Earth, or even just because. I am not sold on that.
We got into this mess because we didn’t hold our supposed elite to a standard. I am not sure we even know what standards are anymore. Musk’s work with rockets may be commendable. It doesn’t undo the tremendous damage his lies and triangulations and opportunism have done in the area of energy and transportation. That Musk’s rhetoric delays further our progress on nuclear energy when he could single handedly unlock support for it is unconscionable. The waste of building solar and battery based energy machines is unconscionable.
I hope that space is an endeavor that is a net good. I hope we have bots finding and mining materials for our benefit and profit someday. If that happens, those machines will be powered by nuclear engines. If we unlock nuclear energy to its fullest potential, we probably don’t need to mine space for energy sources – there are plenty here on earth.
As long as we tolerate a guy who destroyed the playground and brainwashed the school children because he is good in rocket club, we are going to struggle to flourish. We need a new standard. Whoever sets and holds that standard will be anointed the leaders of the new regime.
With you on the rocketry angle. Pure science is NASA’s forte; their committment to advancing propulsion technology has fallen into desuetude. When I was in fucking high school, there was some serious talk and research into forms of nuclear propulsion, and I, artsy fartsy musician that I was, was inspired enough by these visionary concepts to write a term paper on them (wrote away to NASA for booklets on same, maybe I still have some of that stuff stashed with my academic memorabilia from 5+ decades ago). Once the principles of gravitational sling-shotting from earth to other places in the solar system were well grounded, it seems that other active propulsion solutions got shelved, sadly.
Maybe it’s down to my latent “new frontier” heritage that we needed to get out there into interplanetary space, and stir shit up, finding what there was to discover, and thereby activating new paradigms for our people to explore. I think that that is a good thing. If only we could have gotten the little hats off of our necks, and worked with the Russians, what could we have accomplished along these lines? That’s pretty much off the table now. You fuckers go over there, and be the Chosen People all by your lonesome; we will be the People Who Chose, and then see where that gets us. Wouldn’t it be lovely to think so?
How many fads can I have shoved down my throat? I have friends who are successful engineers convinced that we need to switch to electric vehicles. I ask them where the energy will come from to power all of those vehicles and they just have a blank look in their eyes. As if I’m asking a silly question that can be waved away. And these are licensed PEs!
The worst part is accepting they will never have a realization that their idea was wrong. They will shell out the cash for a 60k car, and will simply complain about the chargers not working or the chargers being stripped for copper or the fact that the price rates for electricity weren’t properly implemented. It’s like they lack the ability to think big picture, and are constantly looking at individual trees with no understanding of the forest.
They could have a loved one die because the car wasn’t fully charged on the way to the hospital and they would simply tell themselves that a regular car could run out of gas as well.
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Ask your PE friends something like,
“When you run out of charge on the interstate, do you plan to hitch to the nearest charging station for a can of electricity?”
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I know. I know some technically brilliant people who will say, “We better put all of our resources into the energy transition or there won’t be an earth.” Our education system is broken.
The other night I was with a youngster who strokes to Elon Musk and whose identity is tied up in Tesla and other brands. He asked me why I am pessimistic. I explained that I am not pessimistic and why. The explanation included a run down of the incredible energy abundance we have and how much more we could have if we would unshackle nuclear energy R&D. I explained my pessimism was due to the utter stupidity of the non-elite elites who are needlessly wrecking things.
There are people who do not engage in discussion to uncover the truth but to win a side they are committed to. The response to the energy thing was that there is only 50 years of oil left. There was a smug satisfaction because that, you see, meant Tesla is the future. I had been checkmated. I asked him if there are only 50 years of oil left why he is an optimist. He was bewildered. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that if we only have 50 years of oil left, there will be no diesel to dig up the materials to build Teslas and that in that scenario, Armageddon would truly be upon us, and he as a feckless soy bugman wouldn’t make it many days in that apocalypse.
We left the restaurant and it was pouring out. I told the young buck and my lady to wait under the awning while I went to get the car. He smugly said, “If you had a Tesla it would come pick you up!” I looked at him and said, “What kind of man wants his car to drive him around and take away opportunities to be kind and chivalrous to his lady?”
I think we slap labels on institutions and believe the label. Top schools have a label, but more and more, the people who go through them have no idea how anything works and so little idea how to think through anything they can’t even recognize dogma when it is biting them in the neck.
18
Your engineer friends are very much like my healthcare friends. These are people who understand genetics/virology/immunology better than most anyone, yet they dutifully wore the masks and echoed the company line on distancing and the vax. Of course, they spent much time bitching about it, but they were all very obedient.
All the same people are bought into the climate nonsense just as hard. It really doesn’t give me much hope for the future.
13
I used to wonder why history books spent so much time on talking about individual leaders since obviously they didn’t do all of the work.
But since then I’ve realized that history really can be summed up by discussing the handful of leaders, because society’s leadership is truly the driving force, not the common man.
If society’s leadership is disconnected from reality like ours is, then the common man will also be disconnected from reality. If society’s leadership is grounded and noble, then that trait will be reflected in the common man as well.
10
How true. There are even books about such. One I believe concentrates on only a 1000 people across the course of history.
Reminds me of when the guy who wrote The Martian was interviewed and how experts in their fields reacted to his fantastical plot line. Within their own discipline they thought it was absolute bunk, but they thought that anything outside of their discipline seemed perfectly plausible.
1
I once took a road trip with someone in my normal car who then took a shorter road trip with someone in an EV. I asked him which is preferable and without a moment’s hesitation, the answer was the normal car, no hesitation. Actually, the EV road trip sounded horrible. First of all, you have to plan your whole trip around the chargers. The range is not as long as they say it is, so you have to take relatively frequent 30+ minute breaks, usually in a barren parking lot. If the charging station is non-operational (more common than you’d think), you have to go to another one that is miles away and could easily be SOL and full of anxiety as the battery meter ticks down. This is opposed to a normal car, where a 5 minute detour off the highway means you are ready to go for another few hundred miles. You don’t even save money, the cost to charge your battery is comparable to filling up a tank of gas!
Of course, to an elite, this sounds great. I am sure they have contempt for prior elites who built out this amazing infrastructure that gave people freedom of movement. They want total control. I remember reading something about a town on Cuck Island, maybe Oxford, that designated a bunch of zones that they decreed have “everything people need” and mandated that the peasants of the town are not allowed to go into a different zone most days. This is of course for Gaia, but it also has the convenient upside of the town being in control of your life and where you can go. The truth is, though, it’s mathematically impossible to generate enough electricity to power an entire country’s fleet of cars. The elites don’t want us in cars, they don’t want us on planes, they want us in a pod and eating the bugs. Getting rid of automobiles is part of the plan and EV is just a feint.
30
The next thing will be “Oh, sorry, but the grid can’t handle all of the EVs charging, so we’re going to curtail when you can charge your EV.”
Then the next will be “Oh, sorry, but EVs are actually bad for the environment. So no more EVs. Ride the bus or a bike or walk, prole.”
10
“they want us in a pod and eating the bug…”
Goodwhites really don’t care where you live or what you eat: they just want you silent, out of sight or dead (the last would be the easiest for them).
…unless the power goes out, a pipe breaks or a jogger robs you at gunpoint.
Be strong. Be prepared. Tighten up your groupings. Make real friends in your neighborhood. Pray.
6
They don’t care if a jogger robs you at gunpoint. You should not have caused the jogger to internalize white supremacy which caused the jogger to rob you.
Learn the rules Mow – though they can and will change.
2
The standard long haul semi-truck has a range of almost 2000 miles with full tanks. Last I checked, the current E-trucks are getting at best, 300 miles on a full charge. In what world is this a feasible system for national transportation of goods?
For example, every morning at my workplace there is a line of semi-trucks loaded down with replacement aircraft parts that are repaired on the east coast. These trucks drop off the fixed parts then load up faulty ones for the 2800 mile trip back to the repair facility. Anyone who preaches the gospel of EV as a valid technology for the near future is merely an ideological zealot, or charlatan grifter who is on the take.
29
That’s just the beginning. Think of what you’d need to do to the power grid to allow everyone to have an EV. It’s laughably impossible, and everyone, including non-tech people like myself, know it.
At some point, this fad will die out if for no other reason than reality will punch it in the face. But it won’t matter. The ruling class control the microphone so the whole affair will be shoved down the memory hole.
11
Meanwhile, real problems are not being addressed.
‘Colorado River in Crisis’
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/colorado-river-in-crisis
2
I’ve always felt Musk was nothing more than a cynical and opportunistic huckster who knew how to milk the US government, and by implication the US taxpayer.
These are tech panaceas being proposed as a response to problems created by tech. It’s said that the devil proposes fake solutions to real problems and I feel that’s the case here. The oil age is gradually coming to an end and there’s no replacement for oil. I’m reminded of Alice Friedemann’s little book, “When Trucks Stop Running.” We’re in for an era of degrowth and the siren song of electric vehicles and renewable energy shouldn’t delude us.
The difference between now and earlier periods of history was there was always something to replace a declining resource. When the forests of Europe became denuded, coal took over. When coal started to decline, oil took over. Right now I see nothing to replace oil.
3
4
I’ve shifted from using AWFL to AFL.
It’s become clear that the problem hysterical component of Western society is not limited to one ethnicity.
3
As Z notes, this will never end. It can’t.
The addiction is feeling morally superior to the rubes, particularly, white working and middle class. This naturally requires them to always be out in front of normal people on some issue, whether gay marriage, transgender, EV, etc. But it also requires them to pick something Normies resist against, at least at first.
As always with these people, they not only need to be different (and, thus, in their minds better) but also need an antagonist to make them the hero in their story. Normies play the role of the ignorant and cold-hearted locals who push against the hero’s attempt to make the world better.
For those of you unlucky enough to have watched a few Nice White Lady movies, you’ll know the plot. With every fad, these people get to play out their NWL movie. Unfortunately, every fad has to be something so stupid that Normies reject it because the fad will hurt that society.
The fact that the fad will hurt society at large, of course, means nothing to the ruling class which will buy its way out of the damage, so they just push forward until Normies are either forced to accept the fad or so brainwashed that they now think that it’s a good idea.
Rinse and repeat. Except that over time, these fad make society worse and erode Normie’s trust in their rulers, both of which will cause trouble at some point.
19
“The addiction is feeling morally superior to the rubes,” which Citizen notes, seems to be inbuilt into whites, perhaps most strongly in the Puritan strain. We can only manage this problem, not solve it.
Is this quality common to all races? Is there any race that has it worse than us?
Universal male conscription seems like it might reduce this tendency. Is there an equivalent social program for the ladies to reduce this tendency?
A failed painter addressed this issue explicitly.
1
“A failed painter addressed this issue explicitly.”
Another example of how he borrowed from the Anglos. Scouting is good. Shame what happened to it.
Fun facts about how dumb EVs are:
Apparently EVs eat tires 20% faster due to the extra weight from the batteries and instant torque from the motors.
It’s known that fast charging cables are attractive targets for copper thieves. To reduce the amount of copper used, some stations are using lighter gauge wires that are underrated for the current being passed.
Great, except the lighter gauge wires suffer resistive losses that create a significant temperature rise. So, these cables are already less efficient.
The brilliant engineering solution to the temp rise is to place a cooling jacket around the cables. So now you have more complexity, more points of failure, more supply chain issues, and even less efficiency.
Apparently the undersized cables with cooling jackets work so well they’ve helped, “fry,” dozens of EVs across the country.
Don’t get me started about the Hummer EV taillights, which cost a cool $6100 before install labor and taxes. The way things are now, I’d bet they book you for a cool 8 hours on the install.
24
The EV batteries cannot be recycled economically. It is possible but only at great expense.
8
At first, I thought the e books were kind of cool – order the tome and it shows up on the kindle like magic. After a while, I got sick of them. It turns out I like turning pages and going back to possibly re-read a previous passage, or jumping ahead to the index – all cumbersome with a kindle. So no more for me. Oh, and happy first day of black history mumph – only 27 more to go, although, frankly 27 minutes would be plenty.
23
In AINO, every mumpf is blak hisree mumpf. February is unique only in that it is officially designated as such.
8
The problem with BHM is that it stretches out a “story” that can be adequately told in a day! 😉
I got an email from the increasingly vile Red Cross the other day asking me to donate blood in honor of BHM, for which they’d give me a $10 Amazon card. However, they reccomended that I then use that $10 to support a black-owned business.
If ever an organization deserved to be exsanguinated…
usNthem: I resisted getting a kindle for a long time, but now I find it extremely convenient. But, like you, I like to re-read passages and find it difficult to find things I remember but took no note of the electronic ‘page’ number. I really enjoy the ebook’s portability – if I have to wait in the car for any reason or at the doctor or anywhere else. Everyone else is pecking at their phones; I read my kindle. And as an old fart, I greatly appreciate the ability to change the font size and the backlighting feature.
The problem with paper books is that what I wanted/needed to read was no longer “in print” and was in these times of repression impossible to attain short of traveling to another country and searching their libraries.
Ebooks can be altered, or their license revoked after purchase. But no one reads eBooks much anyway, except for pulp fiction.
Electric cars can have their software updated after purchase, much of “your” e-car is technically under license and is alterable by the true owner. But no one drives their e-car much anyway, because charging hassles, so it’s nowhere near as practical as a IC car.
Pay more. Get less. It’s never really yours anyway.
I’m starting to see a pattern here.
24
Some carmakers are doing subscription services for heated and cooled seats. Haven’t paid your shekels to the company store? No more heated and cooled seats for you!
And what’s to stop governments from shutting down your car for whatever excuse they can muster?
18
> Electric cars can have their software updated after purchase, much of “your” e-car is technically under license and is alterable by the true owner.
If you want to know what a dystopian hellscape looks like, see what they did to tractors.
https://www.csoonline.com/article/3661434/remote-bricking-of-ukrainian-tractors-raises-agriculture-security-concerns.html
Imagine someone bricking your car because you didn’t update your software.
8
Chet: I’ve been reading online complaints about John Deere tractors and all their proprietary software for months now. No tinkering, must be taken to authorized dealer for any and all updates, etc.
Bricking of cars is definitely the future. As others have noted, all cars’ black boxes already track your speed, trajectory, location, etc. – and those who believe they’re not already being monitored are those still wearing masks while driving ‘their’ vehicles.
I use my kindle for cheap fiction that I don’t choose to buy a paper copy of – and I don’t trust Amazon in the least – yet, to my great surprise, the Covington books I bought and read in 2015 are still on my device and available for perusal whenever I choose. I’m not getting rid of any of my books though (although I groan at the need to start packing and storing most of them).
One is confusing “ebooks” and the concept with Amazon’s “Kindle” device and Amazon’s support of such. One does not need Amazon for electronic book publication and reading.
The universal standard for publication is “epub”. Kindle now reads epub formatted books and there are several programs available to read such formatted publications, are well as reading/converting “doc” and “PDF” formatted papers.
The aspect of computer controlled vehicles—and who owns/controls the software involved—is not solely a problem of EV’s. All vehicles, including ICE, for at *least* the last decade have the same problem. I drive a 9 yo Jeep. It has perhaps a half dozen *main* computers to control all the crap for pollution as well as engine and transmission.
Electric cars and “trucks” are worse than useless, except in certain, tightly-defined niches. They’re incredibly wasteful on a cross country trip, since you’ll have to waste your time waiting for your glorified golf cart to charge for an hour or more every few hundred miles. Also, if you read the small print, you’ll find one of these “rapid” chargers can damage the battery with repeated use.
Internal combustion engines are so much more efficient and cheaper to boot. It takes 5 minutes to refill the average gas tank. They can last for hundreds of thousands of miles if the oil is changed and other maintenance is done properly.
Like in your iPhone, once the battery is shot, the device is useless. Manufacturing these batteries requires LOTS of lithium, which requires horrific, polluting leaching pits where if a bird alights in one of these, it dies instantly and horrifically. Then there’s the cobalt being hand mined by eight year old kids in Africa, but don’t let that stand in the way of your soulless car, virtue signaler.
The rich dicks who once drove BMWs as a status symbol now drive Teslas. The thing that makes me so mad about Teslas and other EVs is we all subsidize these ridiculous machines with tax breaks. It’d be no different than if you subsidized your neighbor’s Porsche.
And the math is not friendly to an all-EV fleet either. The grid can’t handle a little ice storm or “polar vortex” that happens EVERY winter, but it can handle hundreds of millions of glorified golf carts charging every night? Right. When we’re decarbonizing the electric grid, shutting down those evil coal plants because they offend Gaia, we’re going to have LESS generation capacity ready to fill in any gaps in the grid.
It’s already starting to fall apart. The word is getting out that these things are $100k paperweights. The “trucks” can’t tow anything for any distance. If you leave it outside and it’s excessively hot or cold, you’ll come back to less charge than before. I left my Prius outside on a 12 degree day and it worked like a champ with no loss in range.
It’s depressing about Dodge. Those Hemis sound very sweet.
21
“It’s depressing about Dodge. Those Hemis sound very sweet.”
Last fall I traded my Ford Mustang in on a later model Dodge Challenger. All black, including the wheels and minimal chrome on the car. No big audacious stripes and blacked out windows.
I’ve had two compliments on my car’s appearance in the last week from my wife’s friend who saw the car in our driveway, and a complete stranger who saw me park and exit it and told me “That is a BEAUTIFUL car!”
Goodness knows what Stellantis, the Automotive Isle of Misfit Toys that owns Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram will dream up for Dodge going forward but the “planned” car is an EV that kinda/sorta evokes the first Gen (1966-67) Dodge Charger. And will have a V8 exhaust “note” piped out of a speaker. 🤦🏻♂️
Or not, because rumor has it Stellantis will offer an ICE option with a 3.6L twin turbo V6. 🤨
Who knows? For a 2024 introduction it’s a little too late to be futzing around with the powerplant. But I’ll bet if the Charger EV ever shows up most folks won’t say it’s beautiful.
2
Forgetting the yet unsolved problem of fueling and storing “electrons”, the EV vehicle concept is a amazing advance wrt performance and maintenance. (Yep, that’s being said by a person who drives a turbo charged pickup truck which runs on good old gasoline.) That’s what will cause their (EV) widespread adoption when the main problem of the “battery” and recharging are solved.
Think about it. Put a motor on each wheel. The torque derived. The 0-60 times. The lack of moving parts in an ICE vehicle and no transmission to boot. No oil changes to forget about. Drive one and see.
What the problem is, as always, is the government pushing the adoption before the technology is perfected—at least to the voluntary acceptance of the “free” market. Remember, it was the Fed’s that outlawed incandescent light bulbs in favor of cfl’s when everyone in the scientific/engineering community was breaking balls perfecting led technology. Where are cfl light bulbs today? The free market won out in the end. So it will eventually be with EV’s—but not what’s being made and forced on the market today
3
Re: link to Peters.
“There is a creepy consanguinity between the marketing and selling of the “masks” and then “vaccines” – and the marketing and selling of electric vehicles. It makes you wonder whether there might be a relationship . . .”
Once or twice the plague, I saw a masked person driving a Tesla, and it struck me as funny how neither had a face lol.
12
*during* the plague ugh
“It turns out that we are plagued by these moral crusades and panics because the people behind them are like drug addicts. For them, modernity is an opium den in which the are condemned to chase the dragon for eternity. It is why during Covid so many of them had that same dead expression in their eyes you see from addicts. With their mask firmly on, they were in the only space where they were both free from the agony of desire and the ecstasy of the narcotic high.”
Opiates of the masses, indeed. In their own way, these types are every bit as pathetic as the poor bastards hooked on Oxycontin. The psychic damage just isn’t as obvious as emaciation and rotten teeth but if anything is worse. I’m sure the excerpted reference above to “those behind them” in regard to the latest moral panic includes the herd who follows and you meant as much.
The seamless transition from Covid to the Ukraine and now to…whatever, but obviously the high from Eastern Europe is waning, is mind-blowing and horrifying to watch. And as one moral panic melds into the next, the previous is memoryholed and forgotten along with all its falsity. Hitler and Stalin never had it so good. The gods that failed are never re-examined in any meaningful way since the rush is to new shiny God thing.
I would like to think otherwise, but there is no way this doesn’t end in suffering and mass death. Addiction is just slow suicide, after all. Maybe this is overly optimistic, but saner opportunists seemed to have grokked the Ukraine War was leading to their annihilation and decided to dry out on that one. We can hope, anyhow, but something along these lines (if not that) will happen. Mass famine is a good candidate, frankly, and again assumes we do not all die beneath a mushroom cloud.
13
Meanwhile, DoD-sponsored Chicom researchers have raised the efficiency of solar-to-hydrogen production to a scorching 9%:
https://ece.engin.umich.edu/stories/cheap-sustainable-hydrogen-through-solar-power
9% folks, we are saved!
10
Electric cars are fine in Asia and ok in Europe except the autobahn. America just has a uniquely horrible amount of suburban sprawl that demands the range and refueling time of an internal combustion engine. But in more dense regions (think Korea or Java) with very short commutes but high pollution, electrics make the most sense.
Even solar cars would work if everyone lived in pods in maximally dense cities, living like a Palestinian. Think about that one.
6
10
Downvotes, but keep in mind that Northeast Asia is very oil-poor and short-burst electric transportation can be a good niche workaround.
1
1
Gobekli Tepe? The subject of ancient technology and lost civilizations is one that has much relevance for the DR. Some day, future societies may look at European engineering marvels, festooned with Arabic and African glyphs, and wonder, “Did colored men actually build these or did they inherit them?”
5
“No longer functioning European engineering marvels,” to be precise.
10
There’s a reason why there is such a panic around the “Ancient Apocalypse” show as well as the resurgence in Atlantis theories.
I can just look at these things, and know who built it. It’s WyPepo. Especially Derinkuyu and the sites in Turkey. Only WyPepo would come up with the crazy but intriguing ideas behind these things. I think our opponents know too, at least on an instinctual level, which explains their discomfort at the ideas.
Also, the “Native Americans” were not the first people in the Americas, but that can’t be made widely public because the regime would lose one of their whitey bashing tools.
8
There is one major upside to eBooks: the ability to carry an entire library on a single device. It’s hard to deny the extreme convenience of that. As a Gen-Xer who spent most of his life reading physical books, however, I prefer print over screen.
Could the push for electric cars possibly be a scheme to impoverish the rabble?
3
I believe the real push is for self-driving cars. If you do not drive yourself, you can only go where they allow you. And, of course, you are always tracked.
5
The tracking doesn’t seem like much of a motive for EVs or self driving. Everyone is already tracked through their phones and their ICE cars. Even if it’s an older ICE car and a driver who left his phone at home, they have the license plate reading cameras out there, more all the time.
4
1
Yes, I meant that as a bonus. But think of how much our overlords can control your movement if you can only drive where a program allows you to. And, for the record, some of us leave our phones off, but transport is a necessity. And I agree with Z on the library. In my truck, I always keep a Shakespeare play (Twelfth Night, at the moment). That is for waiting somewhere. No one needs that much as one time.
I should mention that my Folger editions of Shakespeare fit in my jacket pockets. Plus, I annotate my books, a habit I have from good English teachers. I carry a pen and can mark them up as I enjoy. Yes, I realize you can mark up an ebook, but it is not the same.
I have never met anyone who had a genuine need to carry a library around with him. The reason for this is no such person could exist, as a person in need of a whole library at his disposal would work at a library.
7
The whole library at your disposal begs the question of library content. A whole library of DR material is a valuable resource. If on a flash drive, then it may be distributed with ease.
Somewhere Z-man all of your commentary is being stored. It will come in handy for those not yet on our side of the divide.
The trouble is it is being stored by the FBI and will be sued at my heresy trail.
2
Yep, that is a problem—but one you’ve accepted to chance for the “cause”. We are all in the same boat to a greater or lessor extent.
At the rate this is going the trail phase is going to be bypass directly to burn at the stake.
I don’t care to carry more than one book with me when traveling, though air travel being what it is I often need more than one. If I have my (big) phone I always have my book(s) to draw upon.
Another point is that I will often draw upon book quotes I’ve highlighted for “sh!tposting”, very helpful in ebook format.
That being said, if the ebook idea was completely scrapped it wouldn’t be the end of the world by any means.
1
Having flown all over the world and slept in airports all over the world, I carry two books with me. I also have a tablet, so I could download something in a pinch. I am not against eBooks. They have a place. I just prefer the physical book for all the reasons that have been mentioned a million times by now. What I use the kindle book for is the stuff that is significantly cheaper than the book and the material you read and discard. I have ben Shapiro’s work on my tablet, for example.
2
E-books are useful because you can download unlimited books for free as pdf’s from various internet sites.
I never really had an issue with them, but eventually switched back to paper books because it just isn’t as satisfying swiping on a tablet and it led to more distractions.
Okay. Maybe a whole library is unnecessary. Nonetheless, if you’re the type to bounce back and forth between a dozen or so books at a time, having them all on one device is a lot easier than physically lugging each one around. And again: I prefer a hard copy myself.
Only in a time and place of excessive affluence can a person possess infinite leisure time to read at will and endlessly; and often purely for entertainment and distraction (like watching TV endlessly and automatically). But we are descended from people who got up in the morning not knowing where their next meal would come from and only those sufficiently motivated to seek out food got to survive and reproduce, which was a daily routine we now call work. Are we really advancing as a civilization (or species) when we now carry enormous deadweight among our population; people who just sit around and distract themselves with various unproductive entertainments (video gaming anyone)? We are headed for colony collapse in a self-driving electric auto while playing a video game on the cell phone.
5
I saved this quote for many years (seriously, almost a decade). It is from Boris Alatovkrap, posting on Zerohedge (back when Zerohedge comments were great).
“In cave in rural France is painting circa 5000 BC, and is tell story. One day is rain much and lightening is loud and scary. Leader of cave community is explain danger of lightening and is predict end of world if citizenry is not work hard for stopping of lightening. Every citizenry of community must bring it portion of berries and meat for sacrificial god and make incantation. Leader of cave community is so very smart, is not help hunt and gather, but is must make strategy and ‘guide’ community for self-preservation technique. One day, citizen is look up and see is still lightening, but is look around and is still alive. Other is still alive. Lightening is come and go, and community is survive. Citizen is make comment at cave meeting and next day is ‘fall’ in tar pit.
Leader of cave community is explain danger of tar pit and is predict end of world if citizenry is not work hard for prevention of tar pit…”
17
But are eBooks really deadend niche items? Libraries across AINO–and other places, I assume–are pulping their printed books, replacing their shelves with “study spaces” and computers, and purchasing digital books. I loathe eBooks, but I fear they are being imposed upon us, largely against our will, just like every other horrendous Leftist innovation.
6
Ebooks are huge on campus, but I think that’s because they’re like everything on campus — a huge scam. University Presses are all subsidized, so they can make a lot more money by selling the Ebook at *almost* the price of a physical book, without having to print a physical book. There’s also Etextbook rental, which is an even bigger scam — you get the “book” on your device for the semester for “only” $50, as opposed to an open-ended download for $90. Do the same thing for each new “edition” — meaning, they switched a few commas around on page 397 — and watch the money roll in.
(The last college I taught in, you’d think you were in a sports bar if you accidentally wandered into the library. All the physical books were in a dusty corner in the basement; everything that wasn’t a “study carrel” (=a meeting room for socialization) was a big screen tv with ESPN on it. This was a few years back, fyi).
9
The college textbook scam is something the Mafia would flinch at doing. The professors will assign their books and their friend’s books, even when the class requires reading a few pages. The book itself would go unread if not for the class assignment. Of course, the books themselves are wildly over priced.
6
Ebooks are fine, but I enjoy paper—or did enjoy paper until the eyes went bad with age. Now my ebook presentation devices allow for some amelioration and I continue to read.
What ebooks allow is access to subject matter here-to-fore unavailable because of low demand. Most of the stuff I have read in the last decade or so would have never have been available to me if only on paper. This is *not* a minor thing for those on the DR.
4
Correlated: Most of the music I listen to is long “out of print” and would have been unavailable in old fashioned record/CD stores. But thanks to streaming music it’s now just a click away. It’s good for the artists and record companies too, as they weren’t making any money off those old out of print albums before, but now they are, at least a little bit.
I hear musicians complain about the meager earnings from streaming, but it must be worth something, judging from how brief Neil Young’s very publicized boycott of Spotify was.
And this all matters, both in literature and music, because with clown world giving us nothing but trash in the present, if we don’t have access to the old stuff then we don’t really have anything.
2
“Most of the stuff I have read in the last decade or so would have never have been available to me if only on paper.” This is not just because of low demand. Try finding a paper copy of Camp of the Saints. My digital repository of samizdat is far larger than I could accumulate in paper. The key is they are not “eBooks” in the sense of coming from Amazon, who can indeed control your Kindle. They are primarily PDFs and epubs, with some docx and text files.
2
One of the best things about libraries is browsing the books. If libraries go to ebooks it raises the question of why have libraries at all?
4
I was visiting a friend at Yale back when they converted one of their libraries into an e-library. No one was there. It was just a weird physical space that had no obvious purpose.
3
Eliminating the librarian profession wouldn’t be a bad thing. It’s mostly stocked by women and sissies who hate anything free of degenerate conformity.
1
Years ago, I dated a woman whose sister was in college for “library science” which is a real thing that exists. I spent an evening socializing with librarian scientists. It reminded me of the one time I tried acid.
2
“It reminded me of the one time I tried acid.”
Sounds like an entertaining topic for a blog post!
Speaking of former dates, I dated a lady with a Master’s in library science. When she was working on her degree, most of the students were as crazy liberal as you might imagine. They called her a “lipstick librarian” because she was conventionally feminine.
The scale of the problem is enormous. The US uses 350 million gallons of gasoline a day. 1 gallon of gasoline has 34kwh electric equivalent. Even after adjusting for efficiency and taking the efficiency at face value, which is not even true, the scale is still enormous. There are like 105 million passenger vehicles in the US.
Just how with EVs, the emissions are moved from the tailpipe to the generating station, the inefficiency is also moved mostly out of the car to the generating station and all other aspects of the grid. Even combined cycle gas generation is not all that efficiency. I’ve read they can be 60% efficient, but google says 50% efficiency is the norm.
Jalopnik is reporting it now costs more to drive 100 miles in an EV than from gasoline, even charging at home.
https://jalopnik.com/driving-100-miles-in-an-ev-is-now-more-expensive-than-i-1850031874
If this insanity keeps going on, the price of electricity has nowhere to go but through the roof.
What are we going to do with all the gasoline we produce and will continue to produce even if every passenger vehicle in the US is electric? Probably sell it to China. Producing gasoline is a byproduct of producing diesel, kerosene , heating oil and other oil products.
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I think I heard pharma is another industry that grew out of the problem of what to do with byproducts. Do you know if that’s true?
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No. I’ve never heard that, but I don’t know much about pharma.
I’m reminded of the plastic containers disaster. The industry proudly told the regulators they could recycle all the plasticky crap. Turns out a lot of it they can’t, what’s produced isn’t really good for much but being more trash later, and there’s so little demand for recycled plastic it ends up in the landfills or the oceans anyway, where it leaches away forever.
Stupid, greedy Corporate America will tell the Dumbass Government whatever it wants to hear, and what Dumbass Government wants to hear is these stupid and hopelessly inefficient electric toy cars are The Future.
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They should incinerate plastic if they won’t do away with it and people won’t stop consuming it. Probably would be better for the environment.
It’s more evidence that profits no longer matters to corporations. There is no business case to discontinuing the only 2 Dodge vehicles that have sold in the past 20 years.
Remarkably similar to a command economy. They make stuff that nobody needs in the wrong quantities. You can get free, unlimited food at the communist grocery store, but only energy drinks are in stock and there is never any meat.
This is driven by smug, urban liberals, who see themselves as the elite. They imagine a future where there are no bad-whites roaming the country roads in big, coal rolling trucks with confederate flags. For themselves, the Good and Compliant People means that they will always have plenty of electric cars provided to shuttle them across their transit friendly, park-filled, diverse 15 minute city.
What it really leads to, is nobody being able to drive anywhere, except for the real elites who will be able to use their electric cars. Liberals are useful idiots but not included in the elites’ bigger schemes, and will end up with no personal transportation at all, same as everyone else. Delusions of grandeur from urban liberals really is very dangerous for society.
Side note: it’s interesting how yet again the green insanity tramples over “equity”. The owners of HEMI Chargers are generally quite melanin-enriched. They are cutting out a big diverse portion of their customer base, who obviously have no interest in buying the E-Charger.
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I like the idea of an electric car for around town things. Range is not an issue for that. Also, going to the gas station is annoying. Run a 220v to the garage and you’re done. I know this doesn’t work for most people, but it doesn’t have to.
There are a million other liberal ideas that suck for everyone, but this one only sucks for some people.
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works until you are parked in the grocery store parking lot with a car full of groceries on a hot day and your batteries are dead. How you gonna push the car to the charging station, or will another EV car owner in the same lot have a really long extension cord??
You make it sound like EVs don’t come with charge indicators.
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If you’re rich enough, sure, why not. It is not, and in my lifetime will not be, a viable option for the working class
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Yes. The EVs will work for some time in limited trips. To and from work or to and from the grocery store. Where I would disagree with their usefulness is the long term cost. The batteries will not last long term. When they are no longer useable the car becomes a large appendage with no value. The battery replacement will not be cost effective for most people. The car becomes junk.
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Absolutely.
Range is not an issue for normal commutes. Where I work, nearly every dude has a pickup truck as their primary commuter. Call me an eco-fascist, but nobody needs that much metal and oil for a daily commute. If your commute is under 100 miles a day, and you do errands on the weekend, having at least one EVs is fine. I drove a Nissan Leaf 10 years ago and if you have some degree of low-time preference, no problem.
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I would seriously consider a plug-in hybrid if it was done right. Commute to work and around town on the battery (assuming cheap charging was available). But a gas engine that turns on for longer trips.
But most of the models that were on the market seem to have been pulled in favor of all-electric models.
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the new Prius is just what you describe.
What happened at Toyota, the new Prius actually looks good
The life span of the battery/cost of replacement remains the big question to me with a hybrid. I buy cars with the intention of driving them a long time. Currently getting around in a 21 year old Toyota, that I’m beginning to think about replacing. I have similar aspirations for the next one.
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Hell, just get yourself a golf cart. That’s what all the beautiful people in my neighborhood do. They’re such virtue signaling maniacs.
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Toyota’s CEO is stepping down because he was a hybrid enthusiast and recognized the limited utility and feasibility of all electric cars. Toyota, as the lone holdout advocating for hybrids, has been under enormous pressure to get with the all electric program and ditch their hybrids.
It also seems to be the rebirth of the train transportation zealots, with their famed rail project in California crashing up against the rocks of reality. No longer pitching a shinkansen to go from D.C. to L.A. now it’s about super chargers installed every twenty feet to drive a demand that doesn’t exist. Much like their public transportation dreams, it might be forced to kinda, sorta work in a monoethnic, high trust, highly capable society, but in a land where people make sure their take is full and drive through some areas as quickly as possible schemes that involve stopping for hours at a time in unknown areas is just not feasible, for example.
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Gotta say, I think trains are a great way of getting around. In the city, no traffic. In the countryside, you get to enjoy the scenery. Kind of doubt it’ll ever catch on again in America, though, barring a partial collapse. Much faster to fly, much more convenient to jump in a car instead of observing a train schedule.
For better or worse, America just wasn’t built for trains. And Europe mostly wasn’t built for cars.
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Where is the evidence that car-makers are being bullied into announcing that they will be abandoning IC vehicles? I don’t claim to know what their motivations are, but there are other obvious possible explanations, at least some of which are more plausible than bullying. As far as electronic media are concerned, the fact that I read your pieces on a tablet undercuts your argument about ebooks.
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There’s a very palpable ivory tower sensibility to our managerial clouds these days, a mindset of snapping one’s fingers and making it so by mere command, without regard for or respect to complex systems that took a lot of people a long time to establish. You see it all the time if you’re paying attention, it shows up in a lot of ways, the push for EVs but one.
They’ve never known a world without every convenience, and take that for granted. It is unfathomable to them that they might suffer consequences for reordering it on a whim. A few of them are no doubt malevolent, but most of them are just extremely dumb. As dumb as posts.
They will neither see nor accept responsibility for the consequences of their actions. It will always be the fault of “capitalism,” “colonialism,” or “racism.”
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The elites live in a world where magic is real. By spellcasting in the media and using their vast wealth to influence politicians they are able to make wars, change economies, destroy religions, and even cause an entire race to commit suicide. It’s no wonder then that they become blind to the physical limits the universe will eventually impose. For most things they mearly speak the words and things that are unimaginable to you and I become real for them.
Here in the EU the plan is to outlaw all sales of all cars with combustion engines until 2035. I can imagine how well this is going to work.
There is one really great argument for electric cars which curiously the e car fans never mention. All the petrol stations where I live are owned by Pakistanis. I like to point out to colleges who own electric cars how much I admire their racism, but simply can’t justify spending that much money just to signal my dislike of south asians.