we've spent the last 50 years basing our currency in foreign manufacturing, seems like a good way to tank the dollar to me

it seems the chinese have figured out a different option, i wonder what institutional arrangements facilitate that?

endowments are the tail wagging the dog in many educational institutions

It's about the western gov'ts NOT being able to control the feed, what evidence is there that Chinese gov't is actively involved in curating the TikTok feed?

easy to cut emissions when you deindustrialize

Yes that helps but more important was the fracking revolution that replaced a lot of coal with gas.

Probably the easiest way would have been to draw a line around each factory in the US, declare that those now counted as outside-US for emissions purposes, and then declare that now the US was a zero-emissions country.

Done and dusted, problem solved.

Take it up with China. They are building tons of coal plants as we speak, and also eating our lunch in trade.

Edit: I got a "posting too fast" nonsense message. So here is my response to "solar is cheaper than coal, they are fools":

China has a TON of solar panels and batteries. They make most of them. So they apparently think coal is worth it anyway. If coal was more expensive or worse overall, theu would be absolute suckers to ship their product to us.

If they are still building a ton of coal they’re making a colossally foolish mistake.

Solar is already far cheaper than coal for new installations, and the price is still falling.

They're building coal peaker plants to complement the massive amount of solar they're building. The capacity factor of their coal plants has halved at the same time the number of plants has doubled -- those coal plants just run at night.

Up until this year coal has been cheaper than batteries for this task. That changed this year and they're now building some very large battery farms and i invasive their coal builds will drop.

> That changed this year and they're now building some very large battery farms and i invasive their coal builds will drop.

This is an under-considered point: just because energy sources like coal or solar, etc. are being installed NOW doesn't mean they will be there forever. Here in the UK, there is often a lot of opposition to solar and wind farms. But I would expect those eventually to be phased out in the same way as coal once better/cheaper forms of generation come along.

With all of the AI demands for electricity, as well as the strategic importance of 24/7 power production, you should not hold your breath for coal plants to be decommissioned.

Literally on the day you posted that comment:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/sep/30/end-of-an-e...

AI and crypto uses a lot of electricity in relative terms, not in absolute terms.

If AI and crypto use 2% of a country's electricity, that's a big deal relative to the average growth in electricity usage of 1% per annum.

But the challenge is converting 100% of the power to carbon-free. If you can do 100% you can do 102%.

quite the technical feat I suppose, but the actual result is nightmare fuel -- legs swapping places, people walking into simulacrum of spaces -- just deeply unsettling uncanny valley stuff

Does the study differentiate between strains used?

Got a Klein hat a while back, got a nice picture of Cliff mailing it out along with. If you get one, make sure to hang dry.

you know what else kills productivity? long covid

the main benefit from mergers is increased profitability due to reduced competition; cancelling titles doesn't harm that goal

They were planning to get a couple billion dollars from investors. Now that that deal is off, they don't seem to have any plan.

Lower taxes by reducing "assets?"

Kind of like Warner Bros. WB is looking to acquire Paramount and one quick way to reduce tax liability is to snap them up, then literally permanently delete their shows and movies. Boom! Instant bottom-line "positivity."