fuoqi

Technically... yes. Nuclear plants routinely discharge a certain amount of tritiated water and radioactive gases. But it's well below natural radioactivity levels and certainly MUCH smaller than amount of "radioactive pollutants" released into environment by coal plants.

I find it mildly amusing how for all green talk and net zero pledges, EU bureaucrats and wide public does not give much notice to the third-world-level dirty-as-hell coal-powered generation in Poland.

It does not need such letters anymore. The US got a better thing called "sanctions", which apparently allow US Navy to forcefully detain ships on the high seas and sell their stuff on the grounds of them being engaged in "illegal trade", despite the ship having nothing to do with the US.

>But many enterprises simply took advantage of easy bank loans to refinance their existing debt without adding new spending or investment to the economy. These companies eventually became loan addicts; and as with any addiction, increasing doses were needed to generate diminishing effects.

Sounds like a description of the Western economic situation to me.

In Russia you have to convert 25-30% of your earnings nominated in foreign currencies (it was 50-80% in 2022, but got relaxed since then) and you do it on a somewhat open market. IIUC in China the requirement is much stricter and the exchange rate is effectively pegged against USD.

EUCs "tilt-back" and One-wheel's "nose up/pushback" is the same thing, but it's much easier for EUCs to do because of the smaller required momentum, thus you need less power margin to ride safely.

Personally, I am using EUCs mostly as an urban transport. For recreation I prefer (non-powered) bicycles.

>I see people zipping around on models that don't have any handlebars.

Do you mean hoverboards? In my understanding, your description does not fall under the definition of "scooter": https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scooter

My reasons for preferring EUCs:

- It can be easily combined with public transit. Its much smaller footprint causes less trouble for you and those around you. You can place it behind your legs while sitting and keep between legs while staying.

- Absolutely no issues with stairs and escalators (at least with the models on the lighter side).

- You can get it with yourself into office. In many places you can not bring your bicycle or scooter into a desk space or it will be strongly frowned upon.

- It does not take much space when stored at home.

- Because of the smaller footprint and lack of protruding parts like handlebars, it's much safer and easier to move in a relatively dense pedestrian traffic.

- It easily fits into a car's trunk.

I find it really funny how people blame corporation's "greed" for the high inflation. It's literally raison d'être of for-profit organizations to squeeze as much profits as they can in existing market and regulatory conditions.

The main reasons why corporations get away with "unfair" margins are:

1) Broken anti-trust regulations.

2) Irresponsible fiscal policy effectively monetized by money printing.

3) Ability of corporations and most wealthiest people to ~bribe~ lobby politicians so 2 would benefit mostly them.

To summarize: the root issue is with the government and the political environment which has created it and allowed its short-sighted and irresponsible actions.

Yes, it looks like we see his scenario of long-term debt cycles unfolding in real time.

Raising rates is the best way to kick the can down the road in the current conditions. The problem is that the economy got really close to the end of the road (as far as we understand it). And no, the US is unlikely to follow the Japanification scenario.

From the article:

>And indeed, higher interest rates may work in the short term, for indirect reasons. If money gets tight enough over a cyclical period, then it could indeed cause a recession and a temporary drop in inflation. The private sector gets squeezed with higher interest expenses and tighter credit standards, and asset prices drop or stagnate.

Fundamental solutions to this situation are incredibly painful and require strong political will accompanied by wide support in society. We do not see it today in the US.

The best solution would be to completely eliminate fiscal deficits (either by raising taxes, or by cutting spending) and simultaneously hike rates. Already issued debt will not be affected by the higher rate, thus resolving the article's dilemma. But good luck selling this solution in today's political environment, especially considering that it will cause a huge recession and painful restructuring of the economy in the short-to-medium term.

Please, read the article instead of commenting based solely on the title. The author specifically explores conditions when the answer is "no", namely: persistent fiscal deficits with high public debt levels.

The treasure would've sold them regardless of your investment into a MMF, just for a slightly higher price. So counterintuitively enough, by investing into a MMF your actually reduce amount of deposits lost by banks.

You are right, but I think that everyone understands that today it's nothing more than a formality which feeds those intermediate banks at the expense of taxpayers.

Where do you think your money go when you buy a share in MMF? They do not disappear, instead they get added to bank deposit of one who sold you the share. It will be different only if the bonds which back your MMF are sold by the Treasury or the Fed.

How so? Bank deposits and M2 are correlated quite closely. Usually, bank deposits are equal to 80-90% of M2.

Until recently the Treasury was draining TGA, which was equivalent to doing QE. In other words, it was spending money which it got earlier from Fed by selling it treasuries. Now Fed does not buy treasuries anymore, so the Treasury has to refill TGA by attracting liquidity from the open market. It's equivalent to QT, which will be added to tightening performed by the Fed. Yes, it will lower money supply, but not without serious risks for the economy.

What did you expect to happen with contracting M2? It has shrunk approximately to the same ~$500B in Q1.

>I raided the retirement accounts to buy a home.

Buying home at the current prices does not sound wise to me. Even if you expect for printing press to go brrr again, it's likely that before that we will see substantial decline in asset prices.

>Basocally everyone wanted NS2 to be gone, including the Russians

I call BS. Not only have they invested a significant amount of money into it, they also sell gas to Europe through Ukraine even today. I think they would like to have working pipelines which do not cross any intermediate states, even in offline state.

>NS2 was not quite German infrastructure, it's really Russian infrastructure

What are you talking about? Western companies literally own half of NS2.

>no gas ever has flown through it and none would have almost certainly even if it were still fully intact (one strand is undamaged)

I wonder if intentionally delayed certification of the pipeline by Germany has anything to do with "no gas ever has flown". The point is: NS1 + NS2 was a constant temptation for Germany and blowing it has removed the "wrong" incentive.

It's spot prices, which:

1) Can change very fast, e.g. on potential strong China reopening or colder than usual winter.

2) Do not fully represent cost of long-term contracts.

Also, with reduced industrial output (especially in energy intensive production) you need less gas. If you try to return to the previous levels, the price will react sharply, thus making growth in those sectors difficult. Finally, a significant amount of electricity generation has migrated from gas to coal, which is not free of consequences...

>At this distance I can't even tell that they're explosions

Sure, it could've been swamp gas from a weather balloon trapped in a thermal pocket, which has reflected the light from Venus.

For some reason, you forget the usual disclaimer "Ukraine says" and instead state it as a fact. It's hard to take them at face value similarly to their Russian counterparts. Also the "minor" claim is also maid by an interested party. If it was just a paint job, I think they would've preferred to simply stay silent on the matter. With available objective data we know that two explosions have happened on the ground level and that 2 launched Patriot missiles have failed, which is a fairly high value.

It's hard to take his praise for laser interception of hypersonic weapons seriously.

For intercepting swarms of cheap drones? It's a great fit! Space-based lasers for intercepting ICBMs? Maybe? But true hypersonic weapons (which Kinzhal is not) fly only in air (after all, they use oxygen in it to fly), while being covered in a plasma shield which is really good at absorbing all kinds of electromagnetic radiation.

Meanwhile, with high enough laser power you get instabilities in air which act as a natural diverging lens for your beam, drastically reducing effective range of your system. Push power even further to compensate for it and you will get plasma, which does even better job at dispersing energy of your beam. So in the end, you get a very short range interception system with a minuscule time frame to perform interception of a hypersonic target.

And those "downed" missiles somehow cause a "minor" damage to the Patriot battery doing it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36057675#36065364

It's interesting how the propaganda story about "intercepted" Kinzhals is being spread together with the official US confirmation of "minor" damage to the Patriot system. Also we have videos which show explosions happening on the ground level (https://www.bitchute.com/video/paRpPOE15Gx4/ 0:33 and 0:42). Even if you believe in the debris story, it means that a rocket got in the range of ~100 meters of the system, which is already can be read as an interception failure for a Patriot-like system.

Of course, the Russian story of "destroying" the Patriot battery is also clearly exaggerated. It's quite probable that the most visible and easily targeted radar module got destroyed, while the rest of the system is fully intact or got hit lightly by debris.

Yeah, it sounds like an intentional campaign to reduce discontent from raising the stakes in the proxy war against Russia.

Sure, according to the Ukrainian sources, after the Ukrainian state persecutes anyone who publishes factual information which does not align with its propaganda campaign (like the bloggers who posted videos of "interception"). Meanwhile, the US side reluctantly admits [1] "minimal" damages from those "reportedly neutralised" Kinzhals. Also the Saudis would like to have a talk about miracle effectiveness of Patriots.

[1]: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/16/politics/patriot-missile-...

1) Even being unaccustomed to riding unicycles most people can easily ride in 5-10 km range without any significant discomfort. It's usually enough when combined with public transport (I am talking about Europe, in the US it may not be so). For more experienced users 20-30 km easily falls into comfortable range.

2) "Sittable" EUC models do exist. Though usually they are higher end models and there are some caveats with riding EUC in such way.