I mean yeah technically you can buy them pretty much everywhere, but outside of the US there are very few countries where they're above 50% of market share. They're below 30% in the vast majority of countries actually
Amazing, we sell them our gadgets and in return we get growth hormone beef and other agricultural products which don't even meet 1980s EU regulations, big win indeed
God forbid we subsidize food too, it's only like the #1 priority when it comes to sovereignty after all, we should definitely not produce locally and rely on foreign countries for our food autonomy
How come folks seem to focus on beef, while IMO the real stakes are in obtaining access to important minerals. Lithium, nickel, copper, graphite, niobium, etc. are often listed. There's a nice breakdown on EC pages:
Yes of course, and the energy or minerals lobbies don't have any kind of agendas of course. They're obviously working for your well being and not serving their interests
Also, one of the most corrupt country in the world will obviously play by the rules
You are just fearmongering based on lies. "Hormone raised cattle", and shit like that.
South America likely has the best beef in the world (I can speak from experience having lived on both sides of the pond). Good that I might have access to real meat here for once.
The US tech power is a bit like the US political soft power, it's there because it's huge and has momentum but it's not like it'll be here forever, especially given the current trajectory
Have you ever heard someone open Word or any other microsoft product and say "wow this is such a good piece of software I'm so happy my corporation forces me to use it and I would pay to get more of that shit in my life" lol
Your "better" assumes that availability is not a problem.
The risk we need to mitigate is that some right wing doofus in the US gets triggered by a twitter reply and decides to block our use of all US software and services.
In that case, having libreoffice installed locally does not seem so bad.
Yep cheap energy and modern building techniques made us lose a lot of the common sense of yesterday.
Good thing initiatives like the passive house institute are bringing back some of these principles, you can easily cut a modern home heating/cooling needs by 70%+ by following simples rules
Passive house thinking comes from an era of peak oil concerns, no solar, and no heat pumps. None of those conditions holds anymore. Further, passive houses are notorious for overheating and because they’re so airtight they require expensive mechanical ventilation and make-up air systems unless you want indoor air pollution problems.
People building houses today are much better served by spending their money on solar + battery + heat pumps than going passive.
Solar is still not free or unlimited. A well designed house will be more comfortable and save energy over its whole life while costing a fraction more than a badly designed house.
It's better no matter the heat source really. And it allows you to do without central heating and/or complex heating techs which are more annoying to maintain and replace
> expensive mechanical ventilation
A top of the line heat recovery ventilation unit cost the same as a shit tier air/air heat pump and has no moving parts besides the fans, which are cheap and easy to replace.
You can even make reasonably efficient heat exchangers at home with corrugated plastic sheets...
> because they’re so airtight they require expensive mechanical ventilation and make-up air systems unless you want indoor air pollution problems.
Most modern homes have this issue. Building science has driven them to be air tight bubbles. Look at blower door tests on current construction and a lot of "building science" driven construction.
It's still miles ahead of having literal holes in your window frames to let "fresh air" come in when it's -20c outside.
All you need to do is design a house with a sensible ventilation system, which costs virtually nothing compared to the rest of the building costs. It's even more stupid for americans because they already all have complex ventilation system...
you need FAR less solar+battery for passive house tho. And AC in summer is essentially free. Of course, it all depends on area, if winters barely have any snow and summers are very hot the benefits of very insulated house are much slimmer
The old houses didn't overheat because the floor wasn't insulated all that well so the cold came from below. We could do something similar by just mounting heat pump ground loop under the house, before it is built, but today house developers want it cheap and quick so you pretty much can't find much of that and would have to do it on your own.
Other interesting system is using underground as a way to cool house air intake, just running pipes underground for several metres to get it to cool down in summer and heat up a bit in winter. But again, expensive thing compared to "just add more solar panels/battery storage and let AC handle it"
Ever more complex systems/technology are fine for some and not for others. Some people care about simplicity and the ability to maintain and repair the system themselves.
But why should you make the distinction between slop that is created by a human or AI? Why should you care if something terrible was created by an AI or a human?
For the same reason some people like buying local, or buying hand-made, or buying "Made in <insert country>". People aren't robots, and we know the consequences of our actions are not limited to the current moment and on the current side of the black box we happen to be on as consumers. Further, even in cases of pure observation, where there is no monetary, verbal, implicit, or indirect support - e.g. just looking at a piece of art we didn't pay to see - we care about things that are not represented solely by the observable qualities of an object, especially when it comes to art and craft and the effort of people we admire.
This is obvious, though. This part of human nature will never change, and there is no argument that can confront it, and no reason to want to formulate one unless:
A. It makes you money.
B. It appears to have dividing lines that match a larger culture war in which you have emotional stock.
Good riddance, De Gaulle was always right about americans, we might finally be able to get out and build our own stuff instead of being a bully's bitch forever. Given the current situation and trends I don't expect there will be anything good to expect from the US for a while.
Long term it probably even is better if the US just leave, especially if the next president is aligned with the current government, we might as well cut our losses early and restructure before they bully the rest of their allies.
Do you want the UE to send 200k troops half way to the other side of the world for a hot conflict with the first military power on their own doorstep ?
When I asked gemini it got it right away and as a source it provided a link to your comment... what a time to be alive, I hope you got the Empire State buildings calculations right because you're now part of the Truth ™
The irony is that I feel like everyone here is just copping off of WolframAlpha, which for the past 15 years has featured the ability to display references of similar magnitude for any query you give. And in fact, typing in "500,000 tons" into WolframAlpha tells you specifically that this is 1.4x the mass of the Empire State Building (and also 0.8x to 1.4x the mass of an Ultra Large Crude Carrier oil supertanker, and also 0.11x the mass converted to energy by the sun in one second).
It feels strange to be cited this quickly (by gemini) about something so silly. I used Empire State as an example cause I had just been listening to that song by Jay Z :D
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