Maybe because MLM advocates tell these stories 24/7, both in media and private conversation? Why does no one talk about Madoff actually being a great success (for a while), at least for himself and the people around him? It's easy to fall for these schemes, and there is no incentive to talk about the failures - so most you hear are the success stories.
What does it take to produce cheap CO2 sensors? Ikea would be my best bet to provide a large enough market for good-enough sensors to bring prices down. A CO2 sensor should be in every classroom and every office, but it's not affordable enough yet.
I was subscribed to TIME magazine around 2008, and it was astonishing to see whole issues with hardly any ads. I think it is as you said: When money is tight, it is comparatively easy to cut marketing spending for some time (easier than lay-offs, for example) and in addition to that, marketing might be less effective when people try to figure out how to cut their spending.
That is true, but accidents at higher speed are more destructive/expensive. Mercedes can afford to pay for many dented cars, but at higher speeds (more) people die.
Mercedes Benz is an IG Metall company. So this is on top of the 13th-14th salary that is standard throughout the whole industry. This is basically their way of going above-and-beyond the industry Tarifvertrag (that is already considered to be quite generous for German standards).
General Works Council is the Betriebsrat (100% employees, not mandatory, but employees cannot be stopped from forming one), the board is the Aufsichtsrat (50% employees, mandatory for large corporations). It works really well most of the time.
At the beginning of the article, I thought the process were ridiculously inefficient. But it turns out they are quite aware of the economics. The approach reminded me of the Panopticon: If you do not have the resources to observe everyone, you make everyone know you could be observing them, right now.
After seeing the URL, I was a bit disappointed they do not let sneaker heads make drawings of shoes as a CAPTCHA. Don't require any artistic skill, just some creative effort - worst case, the bot makers will make some interesting contributions to AI art.
VW produces >400k EV this year. And that's about 5% of all cars they produced. And they are scaling up _fast_. Tesla has been an incredible first-mover and bootstrapper - but I do not see how they can keep their lead in the long run. It just is not that hard to build a decent EV anymore. Now it's all about processes, sourcing, quality control - stuff that traditional car makers have a lot of expertise in.
It's more like forbidding Kellogg's to put toys into their cereal boxes. MAYBE they cannot sell sugary cereals to kids without, but most likely they still can. Only one way to find out :)
Insurance is a bet for the person taking the insurance, not the one offering it. Just as casinos are not gambling. Law of large numbers and all that.
I agree that it's a weird business to be in (and certainly the US has not figured out the best approach), but this article is about Germany, and generally I think we strike the right balance here. Not in every detail, there is still a lot of room for improvement (too many insurances, too little competition between them, some questionable decisions about reimbursement) - but I wouldn't dare to claim that I could consistently make better decisions.
It's borderline accepted in some cases, usually when corporate travel is also benefiting the employee in some way - attending cool conferences (especially widespread in academia...), or for "fun" team-building trips. Luckily never happend to me, but not super uncommon. Usually you have the choice to say No, but at the price of being difficult (and potentially losing the next opportunity for a trip).
"Die Erfindung der Currywurst" by Uwe Timm, which claims that the Currywurst was actually invented in Hamburg, was required reading when I went to high school in Hamburg ;)
It's a shame that stuff like that is (at least in my experience) not taught in school. Years of lurking on Twitter have taught me about background-talks, "sources close to XYZ", how leaks, PR releases, and whistleblowing work [0] - and it really adds to correctly judging the stories you read. Of course, it requires quite a bit of trust in the media you consume.
We can see in real-time how the 'hacker' moves the stolen money around, we get to read SBFs private conversations with Elon Musk, and we can track his private plane.
For all the shit-show that is going on, this level of transparency is a great dividend the internet provides us. It's harder than ever before for the powerful class to act in the dark. It's not a lot, but it is something.
So ... it was sus from the beginning, and you still had money in it? How does that compute?
It totally collapsed, but not a big deal, because you were smarter than others, so they took the loss in a zero-sum game ("who gets to take the remaining liquidity")?
Aren't landfills close to civilization usually, so it would not be hard to transfer the electricity some miles to charge Teslas, heat homes or power etc.
Where are landfills too remote to transport electricity away from?
Well of course they makes record profits, something they have increased in value (storage, stock, permits...) But they cannot buy more gas now and sell in the future than they already do - as we can see from the prices.
The argument is that it is obviously never easy to make money in a transparent market - because SOMEONE with money would do it until the prices adapt. The difference between todays spot market and futures tells you something about the challenge to provide additional storage at scale.
For the same reason you "cannot" drill for gas in Germany: it's very hard to do something that someone else can do cheaper. It requires constant work against the market, either by tarifs or subventions. And desalination will always be cheaper if you have to do it anyway, because the (local) value of water is so high
I am with you that it would be nice to provide some sources. On the other hand, after spending time around math students, engineering students and other students and in groups for students with a talent for math, these statements are obviously true. This is not a medical paper, as indicated by the phrase "on the spectrum", but everyone how has experienced these communities knows what the author is referring to. The best math teachers are not the best mathematicians, on average.
I casually googled for sources for some of these claims: These studies do exist. But even if not, I would still think it is valid to talk about this phenomena (taking into account that measuring empathy, teaching ability or mass diagnosing large student bodies are difficult research tasks).
I cannot imagine a happier person right now than the owner of a LNG tanker. Sure, using it as a dumb storage is a good business, but it's sure a better business to move the ship around to do arbitrage between gas markets with crazily different prices.
Right or wrong, it is fair to assume many will cast their vote without doing the reading in such a system. Speaking from a German perspective, I sometimes think how inefficient it is to count 60M votes - just counting 1M votes will give you the exact same result, iff you get the sampling right. What if we could choose a subset of 1% of citizens at random for every election (still far too many to directly bribe), giving them some pride in their responsibility, make sure they have some/better access to the candidates etc.. Again, if the sampling is sound, this won't change the outcome (other than the average voter being more motivated/informed). Of course, I see the problem that people will not feel represented if they, by chance, never get to vote in their whole life ...
More importantly: Gas-to-power. This summer, for some time we were using more gas than in previous years, because there was not enough wind blowing for power generation. Blackouts must be prevented, so we will use it for power generation if necessary.