> According to Edwards’ data, 75 percent of truck owners use their truck for towing one time a year or less (meaning, never). Nearly 70 percent of truck owners go off-road one time a year or less. And a full 35 percent of truck owners use their truck for hauling—putting something in the bed, its ostensible raison d’être—once a year or less.
> So what do people actually like about trucks? According to Edwards, the answer is counterintuitive. Truck drivers use their trucks very much like other car owners: for commuting to and from work, presumably alone. The thing that most distinguishes truck owners from those of other vehicles is their sheer love of driving. “The highest indexed use among truck owners is pleasure driving,” says Edwards. Truck drivers use their vehicles this way fully twice as often as the industry average. “This is the freedom that trucks offer,” says Edwards.
The F-series is the best selling car family in the US. Some of them are using it for its intended purpose sure, the majority are just using it as parent said, a luxobarge.
>The F-series is the best selling car family in the US. Some of them are using it for its intended purpose sure, the majority are just using it as parent said, a luxobarge.
A F550 box truck and a crew cab shortbed F150 are both F-series as well as everything in between.
If not the best selling it had better be damn close with all the different vehicles that exist under that one nameplate.
The F-150 alone has been Americas best selling vehicle for 47 years straight until getting dethroned by the RAV4 in 2024 (unless you add any of the other F-series trucks). It appears to be back on top in 2025.
one time a year or less was the suffix for each of these, many more people fall into the once a month or so category. The economical thing to do is buy a civic and rent a truck the one time a year you use it for truck things.
> A pickup truck should just be max utility, especially if you're a manufacturer making your first one
> 75 percent of truck owners use their truck for towing one time a year or less (meaning, never). Nearly 70 percent of truck owners go off-road one time a year or less. And a full 35 percent of truck owners use their truck for hauling—putting something in the bed, its ostensible raison d’être—once a year or less.
I wonder if there are any other countries in the world where the best-selling automobile is something completely impractical? Or are Americans unique in that regard?
Serious question. I can't think of any, but I'm also not familiar with car markets the world over. In Japan, for example, the best-selling car is the Honda N-BOX [1], which is an incredibly practical car.
An amendment requires 2/3 of the house and 2/3 of the senate -- or 34 of 50 states to call for a constitutional convention (which has never been done) -- just to float an amendment.
Then 3/4 of the states have to ratify it.
I don't think you could get half of states to agree the sky is blue let alone 3/4.
[edit] The Equal Rights Amendment has been in progress since 1972 and while they somehow managed to get 3/4 of states to agree (Virginia agreed in 2020) the 7- and later 10-year deadline built into the bill had long elapsed. And 5 states later tried to rescind their ratifications which isn't really covered in the constitution in the first place.
That one says simply:
> Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex.
Well you see it would free up a huge amount of money that employers are currently paying to insurers. If you take that money (by raising the Medicare premium on employees), plus the existing medicaid budget, existing medicare tax and payroll tax contributions America's healthcare system would receive over 40% more money to cover care per capita than the next leading contestant. Almost 2X the OECD average. In PPP dollars no less.
"But where would the money come from" is one of the wildest questions to ask about a system that already costs double the average. I'd say, give or take, the same place its coming from now, but like, less.
Burrys critique is that the Nvidia funding deals have them investing money in a company and getting both stock in that company and their own money back to buy the chips. They then book the chip sales in revenue but they don’t show the investment as a cost, since investments are treated separately from an accounting perspective. So it looks like they’re growing revenue organically at no cost, while that doesn’t seem logically consistent with what’s actually happening.
The truth is you can't properly account for these transactions. If they are making legitimate equity investments (ie, that an independent investor would reasonably make) it's all fine. If they are investments that don't hold water, it's fraud.
It's not that different to any type of vendor financing. Vendor financing is legit, if done legitimately.
Burry's critique is even more general than that when it comes to tech companies doing accounting fraud. It's his argument as to why "the market doesn't make sense" and his bets have failed -- which is why I'm not sure anyone would summarize it as "betting against AI growth translating into real profits as a whole"
The issue is size, SRAM is 6 transistors per bit while DRAM is 1 transistor and a capacitor. Anyone who wants density starts with DRAM. There’s never been motivation to stack.
> Most of the products on the market today were discovered by accident and have serious side effects.
Topical minoxidil / finasteride has roughly zero side effects (due to the limited systemic exposure) and has something like a 90% efficacy rate. With 90%+ efficacy it's not a case of "this might work for you" it's "this will almost certainly work for you." It's cheap and it works.
Even oral 1mg finasteride has basically the same side effect profile after 1 year as placebo, side effects always* stop whether you stop taking it or continue taking it. And as an added bonus it significantly reduces your risk of low-grade prostate cancer (30% ish) while not increasing your risk of high-grade prostate cancer. Many of the side effects reported are in people taking 5mg doses for prostate hypertrophy, and the incidence of side-effects is dose dependent. Studies show that sexual side effects are primarily nocebo, if participants were told to expect them the rate was 3X higher than placebo, if they weren't told, they were about the same.
* the category of persistent side-effects has been defined primarily for data collection purposes, there's very little evidence for persistent side effects at all let alone a high incidence thereof. Many of the side effects people claim are related are things that would otherwise happen to you at the age you start to lose your hair regardless. It's good to collect more data though.
> As someone with thinning hair, it's horrible how little study/research is being performed to understand how hair grows and treat hair loss.
Given the size of the market I'd say there's a ton of research being done. It's just a tough nut to crack. There's some good data on PP405, for example.
The cost of nuclear power is almost entirely capex and financing, not opex. Uranium input cost for nuclear power plants is 0.5c/kWh. With breeders you can divide that by about 100.
At least as of a couple years ago nuclear costs just a little more than solar plus storage and that’s not stopping anyone heh.
Capex and financing is still an issue for many countries, and the opex is a non-zero commitment beyond just the fiscal portion. Most countries that pass-over nuclear energy are fairly justified in their decision. The status-quo is still not super psyched about nuclear proliferation.
There is room to change that, but the cards are very heavily stacked in China's favor. America's bad at the financing part, fickle when it comes to enforcement & supply chains, and ostensibly 2 days away from bailing on the IAEA itself. The proliferation-resistance of Thorium reactors gives China an export trump card that America will struggle to match.
Treating everyone in the $100-999K income bucket as the same is pretty disingenuous. Yeah someone making $100K in the bay are is low income, nobody making just shy of $1M a year is struggling to make ends meet unless they have a serious shopping problem.
> So what do people actually like about trucks? According to Edwards, the answer is counterintuitive. Truck drivers use their trucks very much like other car owners: for commuting to and from work, presumably alone. The thing that most distinguishes truck owners from those of other vehicles is their sheer love of driving. “The highest indexed use among truck owners is pleasure driving,” says Edwards. Truck drivers use their vehicles this way fully twice as often as the industry average. “This is the freedom that trucks offer,” says Edwards.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-siz...
The F-series is the best selling car family in the US. Some of them are using it for its intended purpose sure, the majority are just using it as parent said, a luxobarge.
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