You'd expect subsidies to drop as supply chains mature and economies of scale kick in. What about subsidies to inputs like electricity, aluminum, batteries, etc?
My cynical take is that this is the reason we're selling so many GPUs to certain foreign governments. Sure, AI is great for vibe coding and making cat videos but it's also amazing for tracking individual sentiment, influencing opinion on social media, creating fake news, and detecting threat networks. "Smart cities" are also Panopticons.
A much simpler and less cool project would be to convert a slice of the RF spectrum into an RGB value with lowest frequencies mapped to red, highest to blue, and the resulting color being how we would perceive the mix.
That would still be cool - but what I really like about this is that it says something quite interesting about human existence, how we live, and in particular how we live in cities when we are in proximity to each other.
Isn't most ag in the US just big business at this point?
Sure, there are still some small farms.. but there are also rich folk like the Treasury Secretary who maintain farms for status and financial benefits(farms get all sorts of special treatment for taxes, bankruptcy and inheritance).
>farms get all sorts of special treatment for taxes, bankruptcy and inheritance
When I see the amount of exploits the wealthy use to avoid taxes and maximize profits, I realize working a 9-5 job is for fools, considering how much taxes I'm paying on my salary.
In my town, a capital city, near my home there is a vape lounge. In the parking lot of this lounge are 3 Ford F-350 King Ranch Dual Rear Wheels, adorned with a small amount of decalling on the side for the vape lounge. Each of these trucks goes for about $80K.
They instead lower taxes for every bracket except those making 2x to 5x the poverty level. The lower brackets are a bribe, and the upper brackets and corporate/payroll tax cuts are the purpose. Meanwhile medicaid getting cut just shifts unpaid er visit costs onto that same middle range. The middle gets hollowed out by both parties.
Pretty much, the whole small farmer trying to make a buck is a huge propaganda push, several companies own millions of acreage.
I feel bad for the smaller farmers for sure but they are vastly overrepresented in the proportional losses because Americans have much less sympathy for large corporations rather than individual business owners. Whats even more frustrating that if you try to read more about this you just get wall after wall about how bill gates owns the most which is patently false
> rich folk like the Treasury Secretary who maintain farms for ... financial benefits
This is incorrect. He divested. Google AI tells me:
> Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is an investor in North Dakota soybean farmland but has stated he has divested from his holdings to avoid conflicts of interest, addressing criticisms regarding his personal financial stake in agriculture.
>In truth, Bessent disclosed early in the Trump Administration that he owned several thousand acres of farm land in North Dakota through a limited liability partnership. He was supposed to divest those holdings 90 days after taking office, by April 28.
>In August, government ethics officials warned in a letter to the Senate Finance Committee that the secretary failed to comply with the rules and needed to sell the land. Bessent's Treasury ethics officials explained that the "assets are illiquid and not readily marketable."
>The August letter said Bessent "would be recused from particular matters affecting these assets." But that was just weeks before Bessent flew to Malaysia to meet with Chinese counterparts and hash out the framework of a deal that crucially included a commitment to buy American soybeans.
No, I'm saying I think it's even farther back than that. I think the article from 2017 is like the article from today. It's presenting something old as something novel.
That's great! Apple has the resources to incentivize and invest in alternate production capacity(Intel, Samsung, or others). Sure, it will take years, but a thousand mile journey begins with one step...
Fabs are in kind of a catch 22. They need big business to improve and to get lots of business they need to be competitive. Im mostly familiar with that narrative in terms of Intel's current uphill battle - was it really the same for TSMC? I guess maybe there was a similar dynamic except the playing field was more even at that time, so it was a bit less of a catch 22.
Yes, it was. Intel was well ahead of TSMC for quite some time. But TSMC had a diversified and hungry list of clients, with Apple at the forefront. Apple got the taste for wanting their own chips which pushed TSMC to be hungrier. Meanwhile, Intel got fat and complacent. It also helped that phone chips were considerably smaller, so managing yields was easier.
Don't overthink it. Some of us were raised on Looney Tunes and MTV and somehow still figure out normal social interactions and do quite well in life.
40 years ago my parents had a close friend with a young and irresponsible wife who raised their child in front of a TV. At 4 years old the child could barely speak. My parents began babysitting and helping socialize her. Now she's a successful businessperson herself and is doing quite well in life.
Studies on the impact of media on children are informative but don't lose sight of the fact that kids are adaptable and will overcome most kinds of sub-optimal upbringing.
3. Have their partner or professional handle most aspects of child raising and have a warped understanding of dealing with a precocious and active toddler.
It's great that some folks have kids that like books and keep themselves busy. It's not so great that their parents think that is the reality most parents enjoy.
Sometimes you literally have to give them something in order for you to get something done. We keep screen time to max 30 minutes a day though for our 5 year old.
5yo parent here. Agreed. And sometimes they just need to chill.
I agree with the overall sentiment. Too much screen time is bad. Kids need to get out and play, indoors or out. In our house, it's a lot of biking and playing with friends outside, Legos, Brio, Magnatiles, matchbox cars, or just crafts.
But sometimes they're frazzled, out of sorts, and would benefit from just being able to sit and chill.
So we'll put on something for him that we're comfortable with. Tumble Leaf, Blaze & The Monster Machines, Trash Truck, or the occasional Ghibli movie.
We do not give him a tablet or other portable device. He sits and watches on the couch, we set a expectation, and stick to that.
I think controlling the device is important. Keeping the screen as something we control and not something he carries around seems to allow us better control and helps him understand the limits in play. 90% of the time, we have no fuss.
And it's not bad. In moderation, TV can be just fine. Often it genuinely helps him soothe and relax (Especially if he's been really active and engaged all day), and as you said, helps us get something done. Two episodes of one of his favorite shows is great to help him unwind while we're making dinner.
But we keep time/episode limits as well, and that seems to keep things in balance along with the aforementioned things.
This sort of blanket judgement on media puts quite a lot of pressure on parents that require an electronic babysitter to function. Sure, it's great when you have a support network and a child who can keep themselves busy, but some of us just need Mrs. Rachel, Caillou, Daniel Tiger, etc to sedate/educate our children while we cook/clean/work/etc.
Besides, non-interactive, low-stimulation media with a plot line and simple dialog is not on the same level as giving your child a tablet and letting them have at it.
My real concern with this project is the amount of time the builder spent away from his children. Now I get it that some folks(dads on the spectrum?) might feel their best contribution to their child's development stems from something they build in the lab but your children are only young for such a short period and taking time away from them to build a custom electronic solution seems narrowminded and selfish.
No one since Volcker has been a real hawk. It hasn't led to hyperinflation, just a continual debasement that has served many purposes.
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