Toyota's New Battery Achieves 932 Mile Range

Toyota, renowned as the world’s largest car company, has often been perceived as an anti-EV automaker due to its cautious approach and reluctance to embrace the EV revolution.

Toyota maintained its course to focus on alternative options or rather specifically saying hydrogen path for its automobility future.  

Instead of succumbing to the hype surrounding these vehicles, Toyota has consistently maintained its stance, emphasizing the need for battery technology to reach a certain stage before committing to the electric path.

However, recent revelations from the company’s “Let’s Change the Future of Cars” workshop suggest a shift in perspective.

After being called an EV-skeptic for ages, they’ve finally shouted from the rooftops that they’re ready to join the party. Cue the confetti cannons and the techno beats because Toyota is projecting that by 2026, the long-awaited stage for electric vehicles will finally be here.

Get this: their battery-powered beauties are expected to cruise an eye-popping range of 932 miles (1,500 kilometers) by 2028. Oh, and here’s the kicker—giga castings!

Yes, you heard it right. Toyota is now jumping on the Tesla train with their own Giga castings, proving that even the biggest skeptics can’t resist a little electric charm.

In light of these revelations, let us delve deeper into Toyota’s evolving stance and the significant implications it holds for the future of electric mobility.    READ MORE...

Learning

 

Eating Asian Again

There is an Asian restaurant 3 miles from the house next to Lowes and we go there once in a while for take out.  We always get Hibachi Chicken (2 dinners) with Wonton soup for me and an egg roll for my wife.  I usually get extra rice.  The total bill is $26 and some change.  They give you so much, that my wife and I make two meals out of it.

I will use the extra rice to mix with something else and that is usually two meals as well.  Six meals for $26 or about $4.30/meal.  For those eating on a budget this is a great deal not to mention the fact that it really tastes good.

While we do not patronize the Asian restaurant because of its price, the lower price helps over a long period of time as it helps us keep our average price for going out to eat lower.

Tomorrow, we will go to SAMS and probably get hotdogs and a drink for lunch.  Last time it was $1.30 for each of us.  More than likely, I will get a hotdog to go and mix it with my extra rice just to see if that combination is any good.

Our Hibachi chicken comes with cooked onions, carrots, mushrooms, zucchini, and broccoli in a dark broth that mixes well with the rice.  They also give us a shrimp sauce that is out of this world.  We always ask for extra.

What we have found over the years in order to maintain a healthy body weight is that it is not what you eat but how much you eat at any one time.  Some dieticians even recommend eating 5 small meals each day and no snacks.  However, we stopped eating red meat over 20 years ago...  If we do eat red meat it is a hamburger or a steak once or twice a year.

The last time I had a hamburger it was so long between the one I had eaten that it did not even taste good to me.  Of course, it might have been the grease it was cooked in.

This is exactly why we like Asian food because we never get tired of eating it and no matter how long it is between the times that we feast on Asian, it always tastes good.

Operating in the Cloud

Before my Dell Vostro 7620, I had an HP Chromebook (which I disliked tremendously) and a Lenovo Yoga...  all three were laptops.

In order to save space on the hard drive, I have free accounts at Google Drive, Gmail, Microsoft One Drive, and numerous external storage devices that connect via USB.  I also have Drop Box, but the free account does not hold much.

Being older in age, I am not that familiar with all the things you can do in the cloud and don't really want to find out for fear of not being able to understand and get frustrated.  Additionally, each place has passwords and they have to be change periodically and REMEMBERED...

I was on facebook but they discovered I had multiple accounts under one phone number so I have been locked out...  not sure if it is permanent or temporary but I am getting to the point where I don't really care.

I mentioned Facebook because you can use that account to log into all sorts of things online or in the cloud.  I am sure I can do the same thing with google and Microsoft but I keep forgetting that I have used them and when I have to reset the password, I am not sure what other devices will be impacted.

I am sure there is a better way to do all of this, but at 75, I ain't gonna spend that much more time on the internet...  because of the years I have left.  By 80, which is only 4 years from now as I will be 76 next month, my time on the internet will be limited to gmail if that.

Gmail allows me to send letters to people I know (albeit not very many) without having to pay the cost of paper, pens, envelopes, or postage.

All of my novels are stored in the cloud on MS One Drive and backed up by attaching them to emails that I send to myself on Gmail.  Some, but not all of them are also saved on the HDD on the Dell.

What I also like about the cloud is that all my audible books are stored there and I download them to a tablet when I want to listen to one.  Once I listen, I delete but they are stored in my cloud library forever.

I remember when I had to download the books to my laptop, transfer them to an ipod in order to listen...  the problem with that was different operating systems for the laptop and the ipod.

Getting back to my three laptops.  Both the Lenovo and HP starting experiencing problem with the KEYBOARD, and in order to continue to use them I had to attach an external keyboard.  That defeated the purpose, at least to me, of using a laptop...  something else to carry around.

Once I remove all the files from both computers, I will nuke the hard drive, if I can remember how, and give them away.  For a year back in the early 2000s, I worked as a computer technician, building new computers and repairing old ones under the guidance of someone who knew what they were doing.  He taught me alot, but most has been forgotten.

It is amazing that I know what I know about the CLOUD...

Introspection and Self-Reflection

In high school, I played several sports, basketball, baseball, track and field, football, and volleyball.

I was a forward in basketball, a defensive linebacker in football, played first base in baseball, and in track and field, threw the javelin, discuss, and shotput.

In all those sports areas, we won about as much as we lost, because our collective talents were mediocre at best.

I would not know what it feels like to be on a winning team year after year, playing with others where everything and everyone worked in harmony.

In college I was an "A" student and excelled in communications when I was in the military.

As far as my career was concerned, my ambition was greater than my loyalty and I changed jobs often in an effort to gain more income and gain more experience that would help me get better jobs and more money.

In order to achieve that type of goal, I had to not just be better than average, but I had to be better than everyone else.  However, being in the right place at the right time, did not hurt either and I was able to experience that a couple of times.  I would have been happy if I had only experienced it once.

When I taught classes, I just knew from the getgo that I was better than anyone else around...  I was better because I was unconventional in my approach to learning.  Most of the teachers taught their students just as they were taught, not admitting to themselves that their teachers were boring...  therefore, they must be boring too.

Self-awareness is the hardest goal to achieve because no one really wants to admit that they can get better, especially if they are on top when they are considering that.

Then there are those who are so egotistical that see no need to improve themselves...  while others think if it ain't broke why fix it?

Thorium

 

ALICE RINGS - Loops in the Fabric of Reality

Strange loops in the fabric of reality have finally been witnessed forming in a super cold gas, providing physicists with an opportunity to study the behaviors of a rather peculiar kind of one-sided magnetism.

Known as 'Alice rings' after the Alice of 'Wonderland' fame, the circular structures were observed by a collaboration between researchers in the US and Finland which already has a long list of discoveries concerning the distortions in quantum fields known as topological monopoles.

The isolated equivalent of a pole on a magnet, monopoles truly sound like something Alice would have seen in her hunt for the white rabbit. Cutting a magnet in half won't succeed in separating its north from south, but monopoles can theoretically arise in the quantum machinery that gives rise to various forces and particles.

One version of the monopole takes the form of an elementary particle, one that has defied all attempts to identify so remains, for now, purely hypothetical.

Yet monopoles can emerge in other settings. The frothing of various quantum fields can give rise to their own style of one-sided magnetism as they swirl, pulling and tugging on their surrounds to give birth to short-lived anomalies that stand out for a split moment before vanishing into the churn once more.

As a member of the Monopole Collaboration from Aalto University in Finland, physicist Mikko Möttönen is intimately familiar with a whole variety of whirlpools, strings, and tangles that can emerge in the weave of a quantum fabric.  READ MORE...

Somewhat Political

 

Feeling One's Age

It is relatively easy for people like Chuck Norris or Arnold Schwarzenegger to be active and full of energy well up into their 70s...

Reason:  they have not been sick nor experienced any serious illnesses.  That is a HUGE reason why you see stories about senior citizens who have the physical behavior of those 20 years their junior.

On the other hand, at age 60, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma and experienced a heart attack that was serious enough for the surgeons to recommend triple by-pass surgery.  I had 5 stents inserted into my heart arteries instead.

Five years later, I was diagnosed with Melanoma, so now I am being treated for two cancers.  

Side effects of cancer and cancer treatments:

1. Nausea
2. Extreme Fatigue
3. Loss of Appetite
4. Anemia
5. Loss of Immunity
6. Thyroid damage

At 75 years of age, I am in my 15th year of treatment and have survived (so far) two cancers.  This has only made my symptoms worse.

I have experienced:

• surgery
• chemo
• radiation
• immunotherapy

all of which has left my body physically weaker than I was at age 60 before all this started.

In addition to my cancer treatments, last year I was diagnosed with spinal stenosis and had 5 disks fused together:  L2-L3-L4-L5-S1...  it has taken me a good year to get back to the place I was at physically before back surgery...  which was again not the best place to be.

My wife is 6 years younger than me and has also had cancer but after 3 years she went into REMISSION (Mine will never go away). She also has back problems but takes shots to avoid surgery.  She believes that I should be as active as she is...  I love her dearly but she is completely out of touch when it comes to that reality.  I am anxious (somewhat) to see how active she is when she turn 75...  the problem with that is that I will be 80 which is why I said somewhat.

Younger people typically never feel the age of older people therefore it is difficult for them to understand what we are going through...   at the same time, it is difficult for me to understand what my wife is going through with her pain(s) as well...

My back surgery was not performed because I was in pain, it was performed because one morning when I got out of bed my knees gave way...  and, I could no longer walk without a limp...  plus walking was a struggle instead of a pleasure as it used to be.  I never experienced the pain she is experiencing.

Kayak

 

The Murmuration of Being

Art by Lia Halloran for The Universe in Verse. (Available as a print.)

“This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a certain sense the whole,” quantum pioneer Erwin Schrödinger wrote as he bridged his young science with ancient Eastern philosophy to reckon with the ongoing mystery of what we are.

A century later — a century in the course of which we unraveled the double helix, detected the Higgs boson, decoded the human genome, heard a gravitational wave and saw a black hole for the first time, and discovered thousands of other possible worlds beyond our Solar System — the mystery has only deepened for us “atoms with consciousness,” capable of music and of murder. 

Each day, we eat food that becomes us, its molecules metabolized into our own as we move through the world with the illusion of a self. Each day, we live with the puzzlement of what makes us and our childhood self the “same” person, even though most of our cells and our dreams have been replaced. Each day, we find ourselves restless miniatures of a vast universe we are only just beginning to fathom.

In Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being (public library), the Buddhist scientist Neil Theise endeavors to bridge the mystery out there with the mystery of us, bringing together our three primary instruments of investigating reality.  

These are empirical science (with a focus on complexity theory), philosophy (with a focus on Western idealism), and metaphysics (with a focus on Buddhism, Vedanta, Kabbalah, and Saivism) — to paint a picture of the universe and all of its minutest parts “as nothing but a vast, self-organizing, complex system, the emergent properties of which are… everything.”  READ MORE...

Bird & Dog

 

Being Home Owners

We purchased our first home in 1969 after getting married.  Since then, my wife (second wife) and I have purchased half a dozen more homes, including this last home where we downsized homes due to age and health concerns.  I have never not owned a home.

Owning homes can easily be accomplished if you are willing to buy a home that is within your capability to make the mortgage payments.

It does not matter where you live, a home is affordable, regardless of how high or low the cost to borrow money...  but not for those homes that are out of your price range, especially when you have a mortgage for 30 years.

I think the problem comes in because these people who are wanting homes that are above their capability to make payments are being denied by the bank.

NO ONE WANTS TO START SMALL AND BUILD UP...

Your first home cannot be a condo or a 5,000 square foot home in an exclusive neighborhood.  Anyone who thinks that is possible is not living in reality and will be turned down by the banks.

I have known people who purchased a $100,000 home that did not meet their immediate needs but they made do.  In 5 years they sold it for $125,000 and purchased a $150,000 home.  In 5 years they sold that home for $200,000 and purchased a $250,000 home. Twenty years later, they had a home in an exclusive neighborhood worth almost $500,000.

Young people have the same issue with homes as they have with vehicles and jobs.  They want to start out on top from the getgo...  and, when that does not happen, then society has been designed to suppress them.

With this attitude they will be disappointed for the rest of their lives.

BTW -  being a homeowner is not all that great because of all the time and money that must be spent to keep your house and yard looking good.  I believe if I had to do it all over again, I might have gone the condo route where there is minimal maintenance costs or just rented an apartment.  The only real advantage to home owning is waiting until you retire, sell your home and use the profits to help supplement your retirement income.  In that regard, home ownership is nothing more than an investment.

If you cannot own a home, there are other investments that you can afford...  like saving $2.50 each day...  if that money is put into a mutual fund each month and you do this for 40 years, you will have $500,000....  that is way easier than maintaining a home!

America: The Beautiful

 There are places throughout Europe, Africa, Russia, China, Australia, South and Central America, and Canada that are incredibly beautiful...  so much so that they take one's breath away.

However, nothing can compare to the magnificence of the United States of America...  as it appears that we have it all.

1. The massive Mississippi River
2. The Grand Canyon
3. The Rocky Mountains
4. The Mountains of Alaska
5. The beaches of Hawaii, the west and east coasts
6. Hawaiian Surfing
7. The Smoky Mountains
8. The American farmlands
9. The Great Lakes
10. The Intercoastal Waterways
11. The Finger Lakes
12. The Wine Vineyards
13. Outer Banks NC Fishing
14. All our National Parks
15. The Tennessee Valley Lakes

Additionally, we are sitting on top of a massive amount of petroleum crude oil as well as an abundance of other materials.  We have more colleges, universities, community colleges, and trade schools than any other country in the world.

BUT, our crowning achievement is not our people and all their talents, but the FREEDOMS that we give our people!!!

Nowhere in the world, does a group of people enjoy the FREEDOMS that we have here in this country.

It is our FREEDOMS that allow and enable us to pursue happiness and a high quality of life.

Think about all the WILD ANIMALS that live throughout AFRICA...  animals that are found nowhere else in the world...  These animals are more FREE than the people who live in that country.

There is a movement underway here in the US of A to eliminate some of these FREEDOMS but I do not think that the people will ever allow that to happen...  certainly not the SUPREME COURT whose job it is to define and interpret the US CONSTITUTION from which our FREEDOMS are derived.

America is beautiful and will continue to be beautiful because of what is found here and because of the FREEDOMS that exist here.

COME AND SEE FOR YOURSELF

Our New Sunroom

Our new house has a sunroom that measures 10 feet by 15 feet with a vaulted ceiling.  There is a ceiling fan and a light that does not give off much illumination.  Not sure if there is any insulation in the walls and the windows are single pane so the room is not very efficient when it comes to cooling and heating.

Early morning and late afternoon are good times to come out here but tonight is the first time for me.  The room is comfortable and the humidity seems low...  so, it is an ideal space to remove one's self from the noise that one does not want to hear inside.

My wife purchased a recliner just for the sunroom and it is that recliner in which I am sitting now.

Sometime this week, our portable heating/AC unit will arrive, and we will see just how that unit might work for us.   Because of the windows and the potential of no insulation, this room will NEVER HOLD its cooling or heating.  However, if the unit keeps it comfortable to use, then it saves us $20,000+ in renovation expenses.

If I am coming out here in the early evening after the sun goes down, then I will want more illumination...  during the day there is plenty of light.

When we purchased this house, its condition was that we did not really have to do anything...  however, we wanted different floors in the house and bathrooms.  We wanted different toilets in both bathrooms.  

Additionally, we sold our living room furniture and our kitchen appliance, so we had to replace all of those as well.  About $30,000 is what we have estimated.  Fortunately, we made $32,000 profit when we sold our house to a northerner from Chicago.

This house gives us exactly what we want and we were damn lucky to find it one street over from where we were living at the time.  For us, it is an IDEAL RETIREMENT HOME.

Saturday Night Live

 

TWENTY-TWO People Needed to Colonize Mars

Researchers estimated that as few as 22 people would be needed to sustain a colony on Mars. But there are lots of caveats, and the new study largely misses the point of colonizing the Red Planet in the first place, experts say.

Only 22 people are needed to create a colony on Mars, an optimistic new study suggests. However, not everyone agrees, and some experts think many more people would be needed to create a lasting human presence on the Red Planet.

In the study, which was uploaded to the pre-print database arXiv on Aug. 11 and has not been peer-reviewed, researchers used a computer program, known as an agent-based model (ABM), to predict how many people would be needed to sustain a colony on Mars. ABMs simulate how well groups react to challenging scenarios based on their personality types.

The model looked at four personality types: agreeables, who are not very competitive or aggressive; socials, who are extroverted and do well in social settings; reactives, who struggle to deal with changes to routine; and neurotics, who are highly competitive and aggressive. The model then varied the number of each type when doing key tasks such as Martian mining and farming.

The researchers found that iIf most people were agreeables or socials, just 22 people could sustain a colony. With more neurotics and reactives, larger groups were needed to succeed.

Limiting the size of the first Martian colonies will be very important, because the more people and equipment that are needed, the more expensive it will be.    READ MORE...

Duck Landing On Pond

 

Buy American... REALLY?

 Most all my life, I have heard BUY AMERICAN in order for us to have a healthy economy and grow...  while that may be a good thing for the USA, it is not a good thing for the average American.

WHY?

Because, the American Worker get paid more than any other worker in the world.  Not only do we have higher wages, but the American Workers have demanded TONS OF BENEFITS as well.

Therefore, if you were to buy American, you would be spending more money on these items than if they were made in China, India, or Indonesia.

By having other countries manufacture at a lower cost, we, HERE IN THE USA, are able to have a lower cost of living.

Being an American Worker all my life, I wanted the highest salary or wage that I could possible get...  Yes...  TRUE... but, my higher wage caused my employer to charge the consumer more for the item than they needed to if my wages were lower.

This is the problem that AMERICAN COMPANIES face everyday.  Do I pay higher wages and charge higher prices or do I import these items from another country where wages are lower???

Back in the 1990s, I worked for a company that moved part of their operations to Mexico because the wage was very low.  At the time this move took place, they could pay $1/day to Mexican workers and they were content.

In the next couple of years, these Mexican workers wanted a $1/hour...  then they went to $2/hour, then they demanded $5/hour and the company moved their operations out of Mexico because the wages got too high.  They could not pass those expenses to the company that had hired them to manufacture.

Whether we want to believe it or not...  prices to the consumer cause the company to make decisions that are unpopular with the public.  Most of these companies are publicly traded companies and it is the SHAREHOLDERS or STOCKHOLDERS that dictate to the company CEOs the dividends that they want to receive each year.

In order to pay those dividends, the company either reduces expenses or raise prices...

1. If you piss the workers off, very little will happen...
2. If you piss the consumer off, they may switch products...
3. If you piss the SHAREHOLDER off, then they will sell their shares and the value of the company will decline and the CEO will be terminated...

Magic