I contracted to one of the big 3 for over 30 years. When we decided to quit making cars and focus on trucks, SUV’s, and crossovers it seemed like they were giving up future numbers for short term profit. It’s obvious small electric cars are the future but our big 3 want to ignore that. Blaming the lost market share on small cars from China disregards that they chose to leave that market. Of course Asia would step into that market and fill it

Elon is the tech version of Murdoch and is more dangerous because of his worldwide access through Twitter. Unfortunately the extremists will have more of a voice and propaganda will overwhelm the media. Since the media is controlled by billionaires they have no interest in exposing them

I have friends taking it through the therapy groups and it’s pretty concerning to me. Self control is not high on their list of skills

I love India and the people from India. I worked in IT for Ford for over 30 years and had a lot of Indian coworkers and traveled to India a few times for work. Like others have said, all of them came over through technology jobs. Unfortunately many companies in the US play the green card game to keep your wages low. Finding a company that will help get your card is very tough. If you can handle the learning for controls engineering, a 2 year degree will get you a good paying job in a lot of the western world helping companies with their automation of production lines. One of my friends who had all the needed skills wanted to come to the US so much but his pronunciation of words was really bad and it was very hard to understand him so he could never get past an initial interview.
But I agree about the current state of India but nationalist leaders are gaining more power and Modi is an example of that. His playing the Hindu and nationalist card over and over again is an example of that. When I’d walk around it was always amazing to see stone and bronze workers doing work that’s been done for hundreds of years along side shops with ISO certification making advanced tooling and micro parts. India is where the Bronze age meets the digital age. I’ve never seen that anywhere else. China is probably the closest but I didn’t see as much technical incongruity on one street like I would in India.
As a worker and many agreed with this view, Indians and many Asians are great at following orders which is what they grew up with, but thinking out of the box was usually a challenge. I believe the freedoms of the west allow people more ability to see things differently and we feel like our view/idea/opinion has value and should be heard because of the differences in the individual. Because of that we’re more willing to contemplate other methods in our own heads about possibilities instead of just doing what rote learning taught and not go against the grain with teachers, bosses, etc. Like you’re finding, seeing what others choose not to see is a challenge. The young are the future and need to stand up for the view of the world they want. It has to start at the local level with enough force to be a regional power. Unfortunately the nationalist have a lot of thugs to do their work and wrack havoc on people trying to bring about change that would challenge those in power and bring more power to the individuals.

Unfortunately most rails are owned by those moving freight and they have right of way on their rails over transit trains. Every auto factory has rails connecting it so it is feasible with a little change and many suppliers are near the factories so light rail and bus service could feed those locations.

I worked with a lot of people making close to 6 figures who only had a 2 year associates degree in controls traveling right along side of me. They made more than me with less education but more technical skill. It’s also a job market that is growing like crazy; automation.

I had a triple major of Psych/Soc/Phil with the intent of teaching. My focus in Philosophy was mostly logic and analytical reasoning. I ended up marrying my GF and had to quit college in my junior year and go to work where I ended up doing a lot of computer work on the IBM XT. One late night working on electronic bids for parts we sold I realized computers are not going anywhere and focusing on that would get me out of this sales job. I went to Control Data for a year which got me in the door of a company. Programming was nothing but logic which was my focus in college so it came pretty easy to me. That was 1989. I contracted to Ford for the next 30+ years doing everything from data analysis at the start to SQL and DB’s for a while, and then I ended up on teams delivering software to the plants. I always wanted a job that would allow me to see the world and for over 20 years I traveled on the corporate dime, including an around the world trip for work in Asia and Europe on the same trip. I traveled almost 300k miles on planes during that time and had a chance to see how people live and work all over the world.

IMO no comparison to a nice pair of sandals. My grandkids got me some with pins? or whatever they’re called in them. They’re like slippers around the house and about as comfie but walking they’re not as nice as good sandals and driving in them is not great. However it is nice having an enclosed toe. If I had been wearing my sandals on a walk the other night when I caught a stick with the tip of the shoe it would have torn up my toe so they do offer more protection than an open toe sandal

I’ve seen 3 major highways built around Detroit while I’ve lived here. There was very little choice among normal citizens who live in the line of “progress”. 375 ruined some dynamic neighborhoods because those people lacked the power to force a change in the proposals. 696 spent significant additional money accommodating the citizens who had the power to modify the proposals. Highways make cities very unwalkable as well as taking space that could be better used

For the last few years I’ve been going to festivals that avoid fricken Ticketbastard. They’re still expensive but at least the money is going to the people putting it on instead of some corporate heads and hedge funders

Yeah, I’m still sitting on my Roku for the time being. I keep all my other TV connections dumb so my TV and Blu Ray don’t have my WiFi info. I did finally get a HDMI for my laptop to connect to the TV to watch racing on YT without ads which is an adequate backup option now. I have studio monitors on my PC that are better than the soundbar/Sub on the TV, but when friends are over the TV works better for watching stuff

Israeli and extremist Jewish lobbyists have monstrous power in congress.

Fuck our politicians and their collusion with Israel in this genocide. Our damn oligarchy masquerading as a democracy is getting to grow old and we need to change and take control of our country through voting which starts in the primaries so we get true progressives in instead of people who want to go backwards or rollover to those with power or money to control our democratic institutions. Yeah I’m looking at the damn DNC who control our only reasonable hope for change. argh

I’ve been tempted to sign up as well so I can stream to my TV through their app. I can block anything I want through my PC but smart TV’s are too locked down for my technical knowledge so I get ad’s which is unacceptable

I have some weird rabbit hole ideas about Reddit doing what it did and when. I think all public spaces are being restricted if it can’t be controlled as wanted by the powers that be, Reddit was outside that power and WB may be the biggest example and how stocks were played out there did not follow the designed path which was disliked by those who could restrict or stop it. I resisted leaving Reddit because I almost felt like it was designed to get us to leave the public space. But I was really spending too much time there and I feel a lot better by not arguing about issues instead of discussing them.

Zionism is the belief that Jews have the right to all the biblical lands. IMO everything else is semantics.

I use hotel water for 2 things when I travel; showers and toilets. The 2 or 3 liters I drink is nothing compared to those. But I imagine Americans and others from areas where water isn’t restricted take much longer showers and we have a habit of leaving the tap running while we do stuff like wash something or brush our teeth. That being said I’m heading to Barcelona in fall and I’ll try to be mindful of my water usage

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I remember when dairies had convenience stores and they’d sort of set the price for dairy products everywhere. No one is paying a 50+% markup when they can readily get it for half the grocery price. Now most are 7/11’s and dairy is not big on their sales list

Michigander so it was all in the Great Lakes or smaller bodies of water. It was mostly a fishing boat