bitsage

This article starts out insightful but ends up preaching to maintain the status quo. Europe tried to dangle economic cooperation as a carrot in front of an increasingly aggressive Russia, so how will that tactic work any better with China? If China goes for Taiwan, they will do so with the assurance that economic sanctions cannot harm their war machine, same as with Russia. Decoupling with China after a war starts would be pointless.

I don’t know if I can stand duplicitous neoliberals pretending like they were hawks the whole time for yet another war.

It will probably be kinder to him than to the neoliberals who thought that giving trillions to an authoritarian regime would somehow make them a liberal democracy.

The US brain drained plenty of people from Nazi Germany and then the Eastern Bloc. The greater the disparity, the greater the motivation to move.

Immigrants from the Global South definitely have it worse in his examples, the Denmark and Netherlands, where even liberal parties have turned against immigration. The Republicans want to deport illegal immigrants, starting with those who have criminal records, they haven’t pursued anything as perverse as Denmark’s “Ghetto Law”. PVV’s platform in the Netherlands is self-explanatory.

China definitely prefers the status quo. With both countries’ rapidly aging demographics, a peaceful reunification might actually be feasible later this century. If Putin and Kim Jong Un are any indication, Xi is more likely to act if he thinks the status quo will be interrupted.

Trump has long boasted that he could have gotten semiconductor investments without subsidies. He would see it as a win if TSMC did the same thing, or even more, for free.

Emergency and humanitarian aid wasn’t stopped. Your own quote alludes to it.

The US is pivoting from Europe to the Pacific precisely to better protect the likes of Taiwan. The Trump admin is filled with China hawks. Taiwan doesn’t have trillions of dollars and hundreds of millions of people to fund its own defense, Europe does.

We saw NYC and SF do this to disastrous effects. Journalists had to start looking at privately collected victimization rates to get an accurate picture since crime stats were clearly being juked.

China has just developed to the extent that top STEM professionals can have a good quality of life at home. Chinese immigrants were pouring when the US was far less welcoming. The US used to also get hordes of migrants from Europe, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea before they developed.

Not sure where you’re from, but here in the US, the wealthy elites love immigration and inefficient governments. Easily exploited workers and a weak government incapable of helping them is a billionaire’s dream. It’s uncanny how similar the past decade has been to the start of the Gilded Age.

Emergency and humanitarian aid will remain. I’m sure all the political and cultural funding is gone though. For instance, Pepfar is still running.

https://www.state.gov/emergency-humanitarian-waiver-to-forei...

That’s an interesting thought because I saw Trump, and many other elections, as a conservative reaction. A main complaint I see is people thinking the country is going backwards, rather than into uncharted territory.

I agree that the CHIPS Act was likely contingent on someone showing semiconductor manufacturing could actually be onshored. I’m not sure I buy that TSMC’s investment was contingent on an Act that was contingent on them investing in the first place. It’s not like TSMC was ever going to get a check to just reimburse themselves. Even now, their subsidies are only for new plans.

Intel, on the other hand, is a great example of a how a company dependent on the government funding for semiconductor manufacturing behaves. Heck, look at the Foxconn debacle; companies prefer incentives up front.

If you remember, TSMC had the immediate fear of losing ~15% of their revenue with the Huawei export ban. I wouldn’t be surprised if that influenced their decision to cozy up to America.

I’m going off the purely structural construction of the first fab. There’s a timeline on TSMC’s site.

Funny enough, Fab 21 was announced in May 2020 and completed construction in July 2022, a month before the Chips Act was signed.

For anything even remotely controversial, I stick exclusively with primary sources and ignore Wikipedia. The site is clearly compromised by admins who only want left-leaning secondary sources summarized. If you come across a controversial topic with biased, or even faulty information, the admins will remove edits which don’t comply with their bias, ban persistent users, and eventually “protect” the article. Even one of the co-founders has railed against the current state of the site.

Hybrid sales have actually skyrocketed in the past year for light duty vehicles and represent a greater percentage than BEVs now [1]. Most western manufacturers completely leapfrogged HEVs and went from ICEs to BEVs, so Japan seems to rule the market, and will reap the rewards. There seems to a zeal surrounding reducing carbon emissions that is counterproductive. The contempt of hybrids is incredibly reminiscent of the disdain of nuclear energy in favor of pure renewables.

1. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=62924

Recent Japanese and Chinese automotive plants have gone up in the more stable countries on the continent such as Ghana, Egypt, and Kenya, but I assume this production will all be for local consumption.

In the end they created jobs and invested money, but both were less than expected. The subsidies were also contingent on performance, and negotiated down, so Foxconn didn’t the original amount. This also seems like purely a deal between the state and Foxconn, so it’s interesting it became so prominent, as if it were contingent on control of the White House.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2023/03/23/wha...

This article seems to be conflating laborers dying during 7 years, and laborers dying while working on a few projects. Considering Saudi Arabia’s immigration system, or lack thereof, practically everyone who’s not a citizen is a foreign worker, and South Asians make up the lion share of the 10 million foreign workers. Are we looking at 21k dying out of a 6 million+ population over 7 years, or 21k dying out of a much smaller construction pool for a few projects?

This same narrative was told about the Qatar World Cup, only for the “World Cup deaths” to actually be total cumulative foreign labor deaths. It took the wind out of the movement to get the Gulf countries to reform their treatment of foreign workers.

Some more information on this: https://x.com/Osint613/status/1836331854913225172

With our societies aging so rapidly, the median westerner becomes more and more detached from the problems facing their youth. In all honesty, this wouldn't be a problem if it weren’t for increasing urbanization (to select areas), but low household formation likely discourages young people from moving to less popular places. I know it does for me, I always tell myself that I’ll explore beyond my current geographic confines when I get married…

It’s remarkable that China even manages to do subsidies better than us. Blanket incentives to an industry would be far better than the regulatory capture we get here… Same story for EVs.

How scalable is this technology? From my experience at an AV company, every deployment site had to be mapped, and after deployment, sites still needed remote teleoperators to occasionally adjust waypoints and resolve stops.

An interesting example of this phenomenon is the development of derelict neighborhoods. I used to live in an area which was re-developed from abandoned buildings and working class housing to a luxury playground. While supply was significantly increased, typical rents skyrocketed.

Some people can be good at their sport of choice and not have an aesthetically pleasing physique while others can be good and have an admirable physique. Anyways, it seems silly to focus on Kelce and not all the players who received or ran for touchdowns that game and, coincidentally, have great physiques such as: Hardman, Scantling, Jennings, and most notably, McCaffery.

This is just a body positivity spiel. The main point of the article is also inherently ridiculous, comparing bodybuilding fitness influencers to people of an entirely different sport makes no sense. How GQ has fallen, from spreading self improvement tips, to shaming people for having six packs.

The whole episode reminds me of “Give me the man and I’ll give you the case against him”. Given the universal practice of inflating valuations in New York and even lying about square footage on commercial leases, James should be filing a lot more civil suits.

There’s apparently a $94 million breakup fee

Does allowing a model to train on copyrighted material implicitly mean associated output would also be legal? They plan to expand upon this decision, but I’m curious in the meantime.[1]. I’d assume this NYT problem would still exist in Japan.

[1]https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-panel-push...