This is it. You can still buy fridges that last forever, such as Bosch, but it's twice as expensive. Appliances have gotten cheaper both in terms of build quality and cost and become much more accessible and overall cheaper over the same period of time as you've pointed out.
I also wonder how many people had fridges in 1935 vs now. I don't think it's some cynical plot to make things worse over time but a result of competition. It's similar with flying and how miserable it is. People fly a lot more these days because competition has driven cost down and make it more accessible but quality had to be sacrificed. If you can afford it, business or first class flying is still pretty nice.
My new bosh dishwasher does clean better and is quieter compared to prior bosh, that had to be replaced at the 7 year mark. This one is far more plastic and I expect it to last only 3-5 years.
Didn't we discover this recently? Like some domestic drone company was supplying drones to the law enforcement but most of the parts and software came from DJI.
I wonder if that wouldn't allow gas stations to add EV charging stations. The square surface of a gas station is rather limited, which is not an issue when you can fill up in a minute or so. But if it takes you 30 minutes to recharge, the gas station can't serve enough customers to sustain their business. However, if you can get to a full charge in 10 minutes or 80% in 5 (I'm guess the last 20% is slower, etc.), then EV charging can become a viable business for gas stations.
I Supercharge at the grocery store, Target, etc vs a gas station. Certainly, gas stations are options when there is no other business around, like Buc-ee's, but I'd prefer to dwell somewhere decent vs your typical minimum viable gas station. Tesla colocates Supercharger stations at Meijer grocery stores in the Midwest for example, although they also have one at the Chattanooga airport in TN (was hard to find a better location early days there).
If you put fast chargers at places people already go today, you don't need gas stations outside of travel routes.
It also makes me wonder how different the packing efficiency would be- gas station fuel dispensers have short hoses and lots of safety features related to avoiding a spill, and it all takes up space. A fast EV charging station might still look more like a parking lot.
There already exists quite a bit today. I've seen multiple locations where there's 4-8 dispenser heads (chargers) located in the corner of an already normal highway-sized (i.e., ~8 pump) gas station with a medium sized convenience store. Takes up very little space compared ot the gas station pumps.
For places like Bucees (which is basically a small grocery store in size), 20 minute charges are pretty reasonable. By the time you walk to the store, use the bathroom, browse the goods, and stand in line for checkout, you're easily near 20 minutes. If anything, it seems beneficial for a place like Bucees since you're incentivized to spend a bit more time browsing and buying stuff.
Gas stations can't and won't be blanket converted to charging stations. The use models are just not compatible.
EV chargers belong in gigantic parking lots. So shopping centers and office complexes. The great thing about putting chargers in these locations is that they are both often close to highways, are places that people regularly visit, and they have complimentary usage hours (offices are empty when shopping centers are full, and vice versa).
That means 400+ kilowatts- doable, but pretty disruptive for grid operators. Typically that will mean expensive (>.5 MWh) onsite batteries. Gas stations are inherently capital-intensive but making a $200k+ bet may still be a struggle.
The Boeing documentaries I've seen have all been great. It really shows the issues with the Jack Welch model of business that only cares about short term quarterly profits. My father used to complain that every new CEO at his company would first fire a bunch of people to make stock go up even knowing the long term implications would be disastrous. He used to say you could train a monkey to press a button and do that. In the case of Boeing, they used to have an engineering culture that prized innovation and safety. Now they don't even know how to make planes anymore from scratch. All they seem to be capable of is modifying existing designs that are now practically ancient. In my eyes it's like having to do a 5000 mile car race and using a bunch of NOS at the beginning. You get ahead of everyone and then blow out the engine and everyone ends up getting way ahead (ok, I don't know much about cars). It's just overly short term thinking.
> My father used to complain that every new CEO at his company would first fire a bunch of people to make stock go up
Yup. My last company had a disastrous CEO who used public layoffs as his only lever. It worked once, despite a total of four pulls. The engineering departments were gutted and nobody really knew how everything worked anymore.
Somehow the company is still alive, though with a share price now about 1/20th what it was and 1/60th its typical highs.
Hang on. I think the OP is trying to find a middle ground between their level of comfort and contributing to the project. I think their intentions are positive; they want to help but are constrained by their other needs or priorities.
My buddy got his bike stolen in Mountain View. Not only did the police find his bike they also arrested the thief.
Another buddy was woken up one night by a drunken stranger pounding on his door. He called the MVPD and within 5 minutes 3 squad cars showed up.
I used to live in Dallas. One night an entire floor of cars parked in my apartment garage was broken into. I called the police and reported it. Then I asked when they're coming and if I should stick around to wait for them. They told me they're not coming. The next night, the thieves returned and broke into all the cars on the next garage level.
Funding really matters. Mountain View is one of the handful of cities in the country with a triple-A municipal bond rating.
We're down hundreds of officers though. And we don't and haven't had a mayor interested in bringing up a new system to replace the completely corrupt one we have.
(The latter part reinforcing your argument that we didn't try "depolicing" so much as, uh, "unpolicing"?)
The very next sentence highlights that the same problem existed before the Pandemic and police protests from 2020;
> Covid may have accelerated this trend, but attrition and hiring issues predate the pandemic. In the 2019 budget, Council approved over $700,000 for hiring incentives, citing the police department's difficulty filling positions.
Actually the very first sentence in the article immediately refutes your claim -- what a bizarre source to 'back up' the argument that Seattle defunded the police;
> "Why has Seattle lost so many police officers?" The answer is not that the Seattle Police Department was defunded.
Yes, I misremembered it and I was wrong about it which I discovered by googling it. But the number of police is way down, so it had the same effect as defunding. Part of the reason for the reduction is the Seattle City Council abused them by calling them murderers. The cops felt unsupported by the Council and unwanted, and they left.
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