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"Democracy and human rights", "strongman dictatorships". Dear God this rhetoric has aged like milk. I can't believe we ever fell for it.

It's literally on their border and the history is akin to if The South established its own nation state in Cuba after the Civil War and China became its ally.

At least admit the double standard. I don't mind realpolitik but it's so tedious when it's not plainly stated and there's this veneer of civility.

Yes, the US is allowed to do whatever it wants to in South America. No, other nation states don't have a sphere of geographic influence if the US doesn't want them to.

I keep hearing about this "we" as if it's still a coherent nation state and not just an unaccountable ruling class from both parties where the most severe consequence is failing upwards into a lobbyist provided position. I literally have no moral preference when it comes to the US or the CCP nor do I care if the entire nation state fails, let alone loses to a geopolitical rival.

> There can be situations where debt is a good idea, and there can be situations where debt is a bad idea. In ~2010, debt financing was incredibly cheap, so if the USA was able to take out debt at that time and use it for productive economic growth that paid more than the financing cost, it would have been a good investment.

Sure, debt can be good idea when it's carefully considered and planned by a well run organization, preferably one where its leaders have their personal finances highly dependent on its success.

However the chronic issue almost every government has is that the government is neither well run, nor do the people running it suffer any financial consequences when things go poorly.

I don't have a realistic fix for this, of course, but it's fun to imagine annual performance reviews for politicians with guillotines available to HR.

> You can't coddle someone to success.

The most succinct way I've heard this massive cultural problem explained.

> In a more fair world a person should probably not be able to amass more than USD 1B by making the right bet on the stock market. That wealth is build in this way is anti-meritocratic.

It's anti-meritocratic for someone to invest their money intelligently in the stock market?

How do you determine the threshold where on one side they're entitled to the wealth they earned, and on the other side their wealth is unfairly earned?

Yep, that's where they shine. There are always cars that are "more", but few that can be used as hard as Porsches. When you fall out of love with something more exciting because it spends more time in the shop than on the road, the Porsche is always there ready to go.

A combination of factors; cost, customer expectations, and convenience.

It's easy to produce a lot of power, it's not easy to do so reliably and within emissions specs. That's where the cost comes in, and where customer expectations come in. If VW is going to be offering a 110 kW 2.0 liter engine, well, Mercedes-Benz can't come in and offer a 90 kW 2.0 liter engine just to meet specs. At the end of the day, margins are fairly thin and regulators are compliant. It's cheaper to just cheat the emissions than make the engine meet emissions specs.

The convenience factor is diesel exhaust fluid (AdBlue); the stuff really does work very well. However, dispensing it at the most effective rate in regards to emissions would mean it has to be topped up between service intervals; very inconvenient. Increasing the tank size is a non-starter because packaging space in modern vehicles is at a premium. So the dirty secret (at least for Mercedes-Benz, confirmed by one of their engineers) is that they calibrate it to last service intervals; not to meet emissions. It's only in rare cases where the owner has to refill the tank themselves.

In regards to the AdBlue situation, if you're in Europe where there are a lot of diesel passenger vehicles and also a lot of diesel trucks and buses, next time you're in the city or on the highway, pay attention to the characteristic diesel stink, either as a pedestrian or a driver. You're never going to smell it from a truck; it'll always be a passenger vehicle. :)

I know this is a popular take, but the blindspot is commercial engines.

> bypass emissions sensors on 630,000 RAM pickup truck engines

In this case, and in nearly _every report of a scandal_, the issue is with passenger vehicle engines, not commercial vehicle engines.

Diesel engines can be engineered to meet emissions requirements without cheating, they just aren't except for commercial use.

Adult Control Panel? I always think "Adult" when I'm trying to bring up the legacy panels instead of the function-crippled slow modern iterations.

Car sewer? Car brain? Wow, didn't know we had zealotry and disparagement over _choice of transport_ of all things, generally a matter people have little choice in; it's determined by where you live and what sort of life you have.

The alleged effect.

> Every year of private renting was associated with an extra 2.4 weeks of aging on average.

The alleged solution.

> Our finding that renting social housing was no different to outright ownership lends weight to calls for greater support for social housing.

As for

> I suspect the authors are across your concerns and perhaps understand them as well, if not better, than you might.

This study is in the same category as any other study undertaken in service of a political goal. The authors would not publish a study that disagrees with their politics anymore than cigarette companies prior to the days of public awareness would have published a study showing cigarettes as anything other than utterly harmless.

The days of expecting any semi-coherent audience to stop thinking and accept everything that follows as fact as soon as the words "scientific research" and "professor" appear are long, long gone.