Grombobulous

And similar to a phone, I don’t usually think that the answer is to just not own one at all.

I’m all for reducing trips and being more mindful about car dependency but I’m not personally going to sell my car because I can afford it and it makes my life better.

Telecoms (calling and texting) are literally regulated utilities. I’m confused at where the baggage is.

I’m failing to see how Twitter is relevant.

I’m failing to see the “keeping up with the Joneses” factor here. I am talking about basic cellular service not a $1,000 iPhone loaded up with brain rot apps.

Last two sentences of your first paragraph are definitely not the sort of thing I was trying to say is okay.

I also don’t think some of the conveniences I talked about have much of a cost. My kids having a cell phone with basic phone and texting capability isn’t a digital sovereignty issue.

And I’m not sure if digital sovereignty matters if the alternative is digital abstinence.

That’s like saying “When you buy a Toyota Camry your life is beholden to Toyota, you should just walk to your destination.” The trade-off isn’t really even, is it?

Knowing where they are isn’t necessarily “installing spy apps,” it can just mean being able to call them or text them.

“Move to a safer city” is a lot more expensive than a phone plan. A lot of people don’t have that luxury.

I agree that all the things you talk about are life positives but the way I see it, giving a kid who is old and mature enough to use one a cell phone is like a $15/month cost proposition for an outsized benefit of being able to contact them.

The other side of this coin is that not everything about the past was better.

I’m struggling to see how having anxiety about losing your children is better. I’m struggling to understand how knowing where they are would lead to having fewer rules.

I struggle to figure out how my friends being more available to text is a negative. What was character-building about calling them on a landline or losing contact with them entirely as an alternative?

I got chicken pox as a kid, that doesn’t mean my kids should get it.

I’ve had arguments like this with my parents about urbanism. When they grew up, the city was dirty, crime-ridden, etc. They also grew up during a time when the automobile was like the tech industry of their day. It was an innovation that changed their lives for the better in their opinion and lived experience. Their house got bigger, their car got bettter and lasted longer and their neighborhood got cleaner and safer, in their eyes.

My parents feel like trying to use the car less and switching to public transit or cycling more is like denying progress. What was the point of all that innovation and progress if we are “going backwards” in their eyes?

The end result of these discussions isn’t that I don’t believe in urbanism anymore, but I’m now more accepting of their point of view on the subject. I see their viewpoint as more valid than I used to. There’s nothing horribly wrong about their way of life even though I don’t necessarily want to adopt many aspects of it.

It’s a lot more nuanced than that. It’s about how they privatized it and how they ensured that it would be sustainable and efficient.

Well, the commenter said “best recommended,” and usually “best recommended” means it’s at the top of the sales charts or at least somewhere close, not #4 in global marketshare.

If your point is that Apple computers are Oscar-bait for pretentious snobs and you’re just not getting why The French Dispatch is actually a good movie, I’m not sure that analogy helps.

Just like the Oscar snob insults people for enjoying marvel movies, what you’re saying is kind of an insult to how good Lenovo laptops are.

For example, Apple has absolutely nothing that answers to the popularity and suitability for gaming of the Lenovo Legion product line. Want to play games on a Mac? Too bad, it’s a terrible platform for it. Just like a mid-tier art house film, you’re not allowed to have fun on a Mac.

The ThinkPad X9 15p has a really decent set of advantages over a MacBook Pro including a better port selection and better battery life than any M5 MacBook product. The repairability of the Lenovo lineup puts Apple to shame.

Is having soldered storage Oscar-worthy?

Where we are still in disagreement here is the fundamental idea that a computer should be maximizing the amount of information on the screen.

I don’t really believe in that. The power user who wants that can make that happen.

The median customer doesn’t benefit from information maximalism. They need the system to be intuitive and easy to use.

Of course, the obvious best way to protect Detroit was to continue the EV rebate program.

Ford, GM, and Stellantis were dumping money into EV development. Now they’re not.

The rebates directly favored domestically produced batteries (although the leasing loophole was unfortunate).

I’m really not sure why the US government didn’t continue that same policy, and beyond that I’m really not sure why they didn’t follow the Japanese car playbook with China and go harder on domestic employment/value capture carrots and sticks.

The result of Japanese cars coming to America is that Japanese cars are designed and built in America. The thing that foreign competitors can never change is that Americans often buy vastly different cars than other regions of the globe.

Let China into Europe, let China into the USA…but make them play on your playing field. Make them hire engineers and build factories in your region. Make them deploy the automotive connected services software servers in domestic data centers.

The US already has dealer franchise laws that keep a huge chunk of the profits from car sales and service away from the manufacturers. Let China sell their cars in the US, AutoNation is going to take all the money from the sale anyway.

For everything that actually matters about owning a car, things like service network, whether the brand will exist in 20-30 years, parts availability, crash safety, driving characteristics and comfort, manufacturing quality, I would trust VW about 5x more than Tesla or any Chinese brand.

VW is nowhere near the top of my trustworthy brands list but they’re still in the “massive sales volume legacy automotive group” category where they generally know what they’re doing and have the fundamentals of their business in order.

If you want to really get me going about legacy automakers that are a safe buy we can talk about Toyota.

I'm not sure this article really points at government debt or spending as being immediately obviously relevant to this accident. Of course, it's probably too early to say, and that again makes me question why we are talking about pensions.

I agree that good reforms that involve realistic budgets and high levels of accountability are very good things. However, I encourage a lot of caution and skepticism around ideologies that inevitably lead to cuts to benefits.

The USA's pension system replaces a lower percentage of the average wage than Spain's system, and its universal healthcare for pensioners has higher exposure to out of pocket costs. Despite this, the debt to GDP ratio in the USA is higher than Spain, and there is a grand total of one government-operated high speed rail line which is barely high speed despite being 5x more populous.

That's why I encourage caution: cutting pensions won't necessarily lead you to better outcomes, it might just leave you to cut pensions with no improvement in other areas.

I know you are not suggesting cutting pensions directly but what I'm saying is that these types of comments contribute to people "voting against their own interests" so to speak.

I don’t know why that makes them a bad comparison, anyone can follow what Japan did with its train system.

I’m very wary of finger-pointing like your comment that ultimately serves to advocate for cutting quality of life for citizens.

Roughly 31% of Japan’s budget goes to social security. They don’t have problems keeping their high speed trains safe.

Cutting pensions won’t make trains safe.

I will also point out that on its own without further context, a high percentage of government spending going toward something doesn’t make that spending irresponsible or misappropriated. In the United States, a very high percentage of federal taxes are spent on Medicare and Social Security. But it should come as no sirprise that a very large percentage of federal income tax revenue is directly appropriated to pay for those things.