The Economy

 

Who is to Blame?

It would be simplistic and lazy to say the Republicans will blame the Democrats and the Democrats will blame Trump and white supremacy...  but the fact remains that our problems here in the USA have been building up for decades...  in fact, the same problems that we see today and the same problems that we saw in the 1960s....  over 50 years ago...

Why has nothing been solved?

1. Elected officials are more concerned with re-election than solving problems
2. Elected officials get wealthy in office
3. The American public is generally apathetic about politics
4. Improvements could hurt the economy
5. The politicians want us mad at each other rather than mad at them
6. The USA is controlled by billionaires and their financial contributions
7. Racism is a great ticket to run on either for or against
8. Corporations and Lobbyists have been influencing politics for decades
9. The American people want big government because it means more social programs
10. Minority groups have been influencing politics for decades
11. Our society wants to keep the public in debt so they will not have a reason to stop working
12. Global markets are more important than domestic markets

These initiatives began in the late 1950s early 1960s and really escalated in the 1980s & 1990s so that when the 2000s rolled around, it was easy for minorities to take the lead and focus, especially Blacks using slavery as the political leverage.

Joe Biden ran on a ticket of UNITY but when he got into office UNITY was the last thing on his mind.  The country is more divided now than it has ever been.  Trump has two indictments with which to deal and Biden is facing a wall of corruption that his son opened to door to by forgetting about his laptop.

Mainstream media is covering up Biden's faults and mistakes because they perceive a worse threat from Trump.

While the mainstream media is not on my initial list, they deserve a lot of credit for covering up.

Everything and Everyone is to blame.  Nothing will change until we look at ourselves and say we are the enemy.

Social Media

 

EVs are Piling Up

The auto industry is beginning to crank out more electric vehicles (EVs) to challenge Tesla, but there's one big problem: not enough buyers.

Why it matters: The growing mismatch between EV supply and demand is a sign that even though consumers are showing more interest in EVs, they're still wary about purchasing one because of price or charging concerns.

It's a "Field of Dreams" moment for automakers making big bets on electrification — they've built the cars, and now they're waiting for buyers to come, says Jonathan Gregory, senior manager of economic and industry insights at Cox Automotive.

Driving the news: 

• Cox Automotive experts highlighted the swelling EV inventories during a recent midyear industry review for journalists and industry stakeholders.
• EV sales, which account for about 6.5% of the U.S. auto market so far this year, are expected to surpass 1 million units for the first time in 2023, Cox forecasts.
• A Cox survey found that 51% of consumers are now considering either a new or used EV, up from 38% in 2021.
• Tesla’s rapid expansion, plus new EVs from other brands, are fueling the interest — 33 new models are arriving this year, and more than 50 new or updated models are coming in 2024, Cox estimates.

Yes, but: Sales aren't keeping up with that increased output. 
READ MORE...

EVs Crashing

 

News

 

Powder Substance

 

Life Insurance

There are two different types of policies that you can purchase:

• whole life
• term

Of the two, term is better...

However, no matter which policy you select, each policy has been carefully designed for the insurance companies to make more money then they pay out.

In other words, the insurance companies try to get you signed up for life insurance as soon as possible, targeting young families with children.  Then, they expect you to live longer than the actuary tables predict you will live.

The longer you live, the more money the insurance companies make.  If you are older, the premiums increase and if you have an illness, the premiums increase.

Their data also shows at what age you will probably acquire a serious disease.  The data is based upon large numbers and they do not really concern themselves with the exceptions to the rules.

What happens with life insurance is that you typically pay in all that you are scheduled to get back.  In the meantime, these insurance companies invest your premiums into a mutual fund and make even more money.

The insurance companies LOSE money the sooner you die after your probationary period.  Even then the fine print has exclusions to cover early deaths.

The way to beat the insurance companies is to play the same game that they are playing by telling yourself you will probably live longer than the actuary tables indicate that you will live.  Based upon that knowledge, you take the same money you were willing to pay the insurance companies and invest it into a mutual fund yourself.

Now you are earning the same amount of money yourself that the insurance company would have been earning on your money.

WH Cocaine

 

India is Growing its Economy

India is poised to become the world’s second-largest economy by 2075, leapfrogging not just Japan and Germany, but the U.S., too, says Goldman Sachs.

Currently, India is the world’s fifth-largest economy, behind Germany, Japan, China and the U.S.

On top of a burgeoning population, driving the forecast is the country’s progress in innovation and technology, higher capital investment, and rising worker productivity, the investment bank wrote in a recent report.

“Over the next two decades, the dependency ratio of India will be one of the lowest among regional economies,” said Goldman Sachs Research’s India economist, Santanu Sengupta.

A country’s dependency ratio is measured by the number of dependents against the total working-age population. A low dependency ratio indicates that there are proportionally more working-age adults who are able to support the youth and elderly.

Sengupta added that the key to drawing out the potential of India’s rapidly growing population is to boost the participation of its labor force. And Sengupta forecasts that India will have one of the lowest dependency ratios among large economies for the next 20 years.

“So that really is the window for India to get it right in terms of setting up manufacturing capacity, continuing to grow services, continuing the growth of infrastructure,” he said.

India’s government has placed a priority on infrastructure creation, especially in the setting up of roads and railways. The country’s recent budget aims to continue the 50-year interest-free loan programs to state governments in order to spur investments in infrastructure.

Goldman Sachs believes that this is an appropriate time for the private sector to scale up on creating capacity in manufacturing and services in order to generate more jobs and absorb the large labor force.  READ MORE...

Electricity

 

Stages

 

Storing Hydrogen

Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS) in Japan have found a simple and affordable way to store ammonia, an important chemical in a range of industries. The discovery could also help in establishing a hydrogen-based economy.

Ammonia, chemically written as NH3, is widely used across industries ranging from textiles to pharmaceuticals and is an important component in the manufacture of fertilizers. For its current use, ammonia is stored in pressure-resistant containers after liquefying it at temperatures of -27 Fahrenheit (-33 degrees Celsius).

Alternate methods of storing ammonia in porous compounds have been explored. The storage and retrieval process can be achieved at room temperature, but the storage capacity of these compounds is limited.

A research team led by Masuki Kawamoto at RIKEN CEMS has now found that perovskites, crystalline structures associated with improving energy conversion efficiencies of solar panels, can also serve as an excellent medium for the storage and retrieval of ammonia.

Perovskite as an ammonia carrier
Kawamoto's team found that the perovskite ethyl ammonium lead iodide (EAPbI3) reacts with ammonia at room temperature and pressure to make lead iodide hydroxide, or Pb(OH)I. Ethyl ammonium lead iodide has a one-dimensional columnar structure but, after reacting with ammonia, forms a two-dimensional layered structure.

Ammonia is a highly corrosive gas, but the chemical reaction with the perovskite allows for its safe storage that does not need any special equipment to store it either. The retrieval process is also very straightforward. Under vacuum, ethyl ammonium lead iodide can be heated to 122 Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius) to release ammonia gas.  READ MORE...

Copycat

 

Interstate Highways

Tennessee has fewer highway patrol officers than many other states  which means the odds of getting caught speeding are rather low.  However, they are very good at playing the game and tricking drivers into thinking they are not going to get caught by using spotters.

Most of the interstate highways in Tennessee have a posted speed limit of 70, but that does not seem to bother drivers who want to exceed that limit.  It is safe to say that most drivers like to top out at 80/85 but there are some that are at 90/95 and get really mad if you do not get out of the way and they have to slow down.

Personally, I don't care what other drivers think, especially those that like to tailgate the car in front of them in the hopes of forcing them to increase their speed.   When that happens to me, I typically either maintain my speed or slow down a tad.

Aside from tailgating, what really gets to me is that most of the drivers on the road today have no sense of DEPTH OF FIELD...  they will try to pass your car on the right hand side, not realizing the new car in front of them is not driving very fast, causing them to brake hard to slow down.  I always smile when I see that.

One of the first things they taught us in our drivers education class was how to judge depth of field on the interstate.  These instructors were also real keen of making sure we understood to slow down when we exited off onto another road or needed to stop at a rest area.

The other issue that drivers don't seem to care about much is how fast the car is going relative to fuel efficiency and arrival times.

• At 60 mph, it will take you 4 hours to travel 240 miles.  Between 55 and 60 is when the vehicle is operating at its most efficient.
• At 70 mph, it will take you 3 hours and 43 minutes to travel 240 miles, saving you 17 minutes of time but burning more gasoline.
• At 80 mph, it will take you 3 hours to drive 240 miles, saving you an hour of time, but you will be burning even more gasoline.

You can calculate the cost of driving fast by looking at the fuel efficiency of your vehicle...  or you can simply top off the gas tank before you leave and top off the gas tank when you get there and see how many gallons you purchased.

Remember a vehicle's miles per gallon goes down the faster you drive.

I have found that once my wife and I retired, we no longer had a need to get places quickly.  It may take us an hour longer but our stress was reduced and we saved money that we used for something else.  Living on a fixed income will cause you to look at life differently.

Creative

 

Time Reversal

A team of researchers from the University of Twente has successfully illustrated that quantum mechanics and thermodynamics can coexist by using an optical chip with photon channels. The channels individually showed disorder in line with thermodynamics, while the overall system complied with quantum mechanics due to the entanglement of subsystems, proving that information can be preserved and transferred. Credit: University of Twente

It seems quantum mechanics and thermodynamics cannot be true simultaneously. In a new publication, University of Twente researchers use photons in an optical chip to demonstrate how both theories can be true at the same time.

In quantum mechanics, time can be reversed and information is always preserved. That is, one can always find back the previous state of particles. It was long unknown how this could be true at the same time as thermodynamics. 

There, time has a direction and information can also be lost. “Just think of two photographs that you put in the sun for too long, after a while you can no longer distinguish them,” explains author Jelmer Renema.

There was already a theoretical solution to this quantum puzzle and even an experiment with atoms, but now the University of Twente (UT) researchers have also demonstrated it with photons. “Photons have the advantage that it is quite easy to reverse time with them,” explains Renema. 

In the experiment, the researchers used an optical chip with channels through which the photons could pass. At first, they could determine exactly how many photons there were in each channel, but after that, the photons shuffled positions.  READ MORE...

The Internet

 

Life Lessons

 

Robots For Home Motion & Planning

Why aren’t there more robots in homes? This a surprising complex question — and our homes are surprisingly complex places. A big part of the reason autonomous systems are thriving on warehouse and factory floors first is the relative ease of navigating a structured environment. Sure, most systems still require a space be mapped prior to getting to work, but once that’s in place there tends to be little in the way of variation.

Homes, on the other hand, are kind of a nightmare. Not only do they vary dramatically from unit to unit, they’re full of unfriendly obstacles and tend to be fairly dynamic, as furniture is moved around or things are left on the floor. Vacuums are the most prevalent robots in the home, and they’re still being refined after decades on the market.

This week, researchers at MIT CSAIL are showcasing PIGINet (Plans, Images, Goal, and Initial facts), which is designed to bring task and motion planning to home robotic systems. The neural network is designed to help streamline their ability to create plans of action in different environments.

MIT explains PIGINet thusly:
[I]t employs a transformer encoder, a versatile and state-of-the-art model designed to operate on data sequences. The input sequence, in this case, is information about which task plan it is considering, images of the environment, and symbolic encodings of the initial state and the desired goal. The encoder combines the task plans, image, and text to generate a prediction regarding the feasibility of the selected task plan.

The system is largely focused on kitchen-based activities at present. It draws on simulated home environments to build plans that require interactions with various different elements of the environment, like counters, cabinets, the fridge, sinks, etc. The researchers say that in simpler scenarios, PIGINet was able to reduce planning time by 80%. For more complex situations, that number was generally around 20-50%.

The team suggests that houses are just the start.  READ MORE...