Changed mind 3c

(cont'd from 7-30 post)

Here is Karlyn Borysenko's story, but in a different (just 5-minutes) format than appeared in this blog before. 

It's an unusual story of seeking information and following the evidence in spite of skepticism. There aren't many like her out there, people who will really check out their personal assumptions. 

Future $25k EV

 (cont'd from 9-25 post)

That same author who wrote the first Forbes article (linked in 9-25 post) has a prediction to make. Investors apparently were under-whelmed by Tesla's "Battery Day" report, but he sees an indication of the future in it. 

Some investors were not impressed by the incremental technical innovations. "But the tail end of the Battery Day presentation was incredibly significant and foretells the final nail in the coffin of the traditional car industry based around fossil fuel propulsion."

The battery makes an electrical vehicle (EV) more expensive to purchase than a traditional car. But that will change because of all the cost-savings Elon unveiled on Battery Day. He expects to deliver the $25k model within three years.

So . . "When you can buy an EV with over 300 miles of range that is faster and equipped with better technology than an internal combustion engine VW Golf, as well as being much cheaper to run, only groundless anti-electric prejudice will stop you."

from Forbes, "Tesla's $25,000 Electric Car Means Game Over for Gas and Oil"

De-fund?

(cont'd from 9-22 post)

The New York Times reports that Minneapolis City Council regrets their decision to de-fund their police department (they did reduce funding). That decision came in the heat of the protests over the killing of George Floyd by a police officer.

Though Council members pledged in June to do it, now they're walking that back by saying council members understood "different interpretations" of the proposal. The mayor and a majority of citizens in opinion polls now oppose it. 

An activist group, Black Visions Collective, still wants to both de-fund and abolish the police. But another activist says "those paying the price . . [are] the exact communities that leaders had pledged to help." 

Gun violence grew over the summer.

Battery Day 2

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

One more technical innovation: Tesla is going to start bonding their batteries right to the chassis. Elon says it's similar to aircraft wings actually being fuel tanks, instead of holding fuel tanks. The result will be increased range and cost reduction. 

All this innovation is going to lead to “a compelling $25,000 car that is also fully autonomous," not right away but eventually. That's a game changer.

"[I]f Tesla delivers on these promises, it will be hard to see how other automakers can compete, considering how much of an EV’s cost comes from batteries. They must be very worried indeed how they can produce anything to compare with what Musk presented at Battery Day 2020."

from Forbes

Battery Day 1

Elon Musk gave his investors good news this week (on Sept.22, "Battery Day"). Some had been revealed earlier, some had not, but altogether this news will make Tesla even more attractive to car buyers.

Improvements in Tesla batteries are technical: cell design, streamlining of the factory making the cells, innovations in the anode materials, altering the cathode materials, and finally changing how the batteries would be integrated into the car. 

Also important, cobalt - a very expensive material not easily obtained - is being progressively phased out.

These innovations will result in a reduction of the cost of an EV (electric vehicle) battery . .  an amazing reduction of about 56%.

from Forbes

(cont'd tomorrow)

Riot damage

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

 Minneapolis' Lake Street neighborhood was hard hit by rioting, looting, burning this summer. About 20 years ago Hispanic and East African entrepreneurs opened ~100 businesses here. They struggled under the pandemic restrictions, and now this happens.

Insurance is not going to restore the time, work and emotional investment that went into these businesses. There will be massive "hardships to the business community and to the community as a whole."

Korboi Balla's sports bar was a dream turned into a nightmare. When he heard the next morning that it was burned up, he was serving a shift at the fire station. When he came to see it for himself, all he could do was cry.

Restaurant owner Ruhel Islam saw his business burning and said, "Let my building burn, justice needs to be served . . ." 

But the burning of minority businesses serves no justice. 

Not reassuring

Minneapolis made headlines this summer when riots and looting raged again and again. Hundreds of small businesses were destroyed. Protesters demanded that the police department be de-funded. Surprisingly, the City Council of Minneapolis agreed to do it. Crime is climbing.

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The owner of Pedego Electric Bikes sent an email to the police complaining that his employees were afraid to come to work. He got an answer that was not reassuring. Inspector Sean McGinty wrote back about the situation:

• he lost 30% of his street officers
• 17 CSO's (Community Service Officers) were laid off
• a recruiting class of 29 was canceled
• the Council reduced funding by $l.5 million
• a Cadet class for January was canceled

"It takes about a year to get a police Officer onto the streets with hiring, backgrounds and field training so reinforcements aren’t coming anytime soon. We are doing everything we can with what we have. I hate to see great businesses like yours and the rest of your corridor being victimized and feeling unsafe."

It's disaster for Minneapolis.

from Hot Air

Hymn

Beauty, honor, respect, majesty, all appropriate to this music set in Westminster Abbey last March. The Queen and the royal family all take part in this celebration of Commonwealth Day.

"Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation," "Ponder anew what the Almighty can do" - much of the hymn is taken from the Bible. I know the words, I sing along from my heart.

Maybe you are tempted to scorn the pomp as hypocritical. Do most in this abbey join their faith with the genuine historic faith of Britain? No. We're well aware that Christianity has severely declined in all of Europe.

But I love to see this remnant of historic faith still honored. May these God-inspired words and ideas still have impact. 

Something beautiful to enjoy this Monday.

Free speech 3

America's founders considered the right to speak freely to be foundational to a self-governing people, so they put it in the constitution. 

The principle has been refined and described and defended by judges throughout our history. And it should be. Today it is challenged - by people within their rights - and the case for free speech needs to be made again. 

Here is one example: the opinion of former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in Whitney vs. California on why free speech is important and government should not ordinarily force  silence:

In order to combat speech we don't approve of, we need to "[E]xpose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies . . the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."

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We believe "it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones. Believing in the power of reason as applied through public discussion, [we eschew] silence coerced by law--the argument of force in its worst form."

Thomas Jefferson: "We have nothing to fear from the demoralizing reasonings of some, if others are left free to demonstrate their errors"

from Cornell Law School

Philanthropist

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

Back in 2014, Forbes gave Chuck Feeney a Forbes 400 Lifetime Achievement Award for Philanthropy at the Forbes Philanthropy Summit. Legendary investor Warren Buffett presented the award, saying that Feeney is his and Bill Gates' hero.

Buffett and Gates launched the "Giving Pledge" in 2010 to urge the wealthiest people to give half of their fortunes away before death. Buffett says, “Chuck was a cornerstone in terms of inspiration for the Giving Pledge. He’s a model for us all. It’s going to take me 12 years after my death to get done what he’s doing within his lifetime.”  

One of Feeney's projects was to grant two universities (with $177 million multi-year) to focus on aging globally. They hope to decrease the incidence of dementia and improve patient care. Experts think that people with the condition will triple by 2050, impacting families as well.

007 Philanthropy

Forbes calls him "The James Bond of Philanthropy." He wanted to die broke, and that's going to happen. Over the past decade he's given away the $8 billion fortune which he made after co-founding Duty Free Shoppers.

photo

Many wealthy individuals leave their charitable giving in their will, to be dispersed after their death. But Charles Feeney had a different vision. Since you can't take it with you—why not give it all away while you're alive, have control of where it goes and see the results? 

His vision impacted other givers. Laurene Powell Jobs (Steve Jobs' widow) says, "Chuck Feeney is a true pioneer. Spending down his resources during his lifetime has inspired a generation of philanthropists, including me."

(cont'd tomorrow)

Music formats

"Recorded music is cheaper, more abundant, and more convenient today than ever before in human history." Not to mention sound quality.

In just a few decades we've lived through vinyl records, tapes and cd's. None of them make up a big portion of the market anymore.

Have fun watching all of them give way to streaming on this animated chart of recorded music sales by format from 1973 to 2020.

"For $10 per month, you can conveniently access an unlimited amount of high-quality music. Think about it — for about 30 cents a day, the world’s entire music library is at your fingertips . .  . "

Automated

Robots and automation are the trends in jobs, not a new concept. But Amazon has put a date on it: they project that their warehouses could be fully automated in ten years, so by 2029 since this article is from 2019. That involves 125,000 jobs.

But bots will have to up their game, especially if food is involved. When picking an item from a bin, they may damage the other items. Picture that happening when the mechanical arm selects a banana from a Whole Foods bin.

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"Pick and place" robots are already pretty good at what they do. "The two main benefits of pick and place robots are speed and consistency. For pick and place robots, throughput can often reach up to 200 products per minute, while vision systems can identify 100 products per second on a moving conveyor. "

Lost brothers

Nineteen years ago today, 2,977 innocent Americans were murdered by radical Islamic terrorists. Families today are still personally impacted by 9-11 and the war that followed.

Beau Wise was in high school when it happened, and immediately thought of his brother Ben who was already in the army. A few months later his other brother Jeremy left medical school to train for the Navy Seals. Beau himself joined the Marines a few years later and deployed to Afghanistan twice.

Ben died in an attack by Al Qaeda and Jeremy died in a firefight with the Taliban. Beau was prevented from going back to combat by the same Pentagon policy demonstrated in the movie "Saving Private Ryan."

image

TFR & faith 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Europe and the U.S. today have similarly low TFR (total fertility rate), about 1.7 births in the average woman's life. 

Historian Philip Jenkins has linked this global phenomenon to another, namely the decline of institutional religion and a "tectonic shift in public morality." Secularization and low birth rates go together. For Western societies, that means religious expression will keep declining.

But, "The population of sub-Saharan Africa is expected to treble in size to more than three billion people by 2100." With a TFR well above replacement rate, they will keep growing in population numbers. And, surveys of these countries show religious participation is important to about 95% of the people.

Jenkins is confident that: "As the century proceeds, Christianity will become ever more markedly a religion of Africa . .", one-third of all the Christians in the world.

image

(cont'd tomorrow)

TFR & faith 1

Seven years ago I read What to Expect When No One's Expecting and wrote about it in this blog ("Less People" series, May 2013). Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is declining in many countries of the world, which results in aging societies and declining population. (Get some background here.)

image

It's a stunning reversal for the many people who thought global population growth was dangerously out of control.

A professor says, "This is jaw-dropping . . . It will create enormous social change. It makes me worried because I have an eight-year-old daughter and I wonder what the world will be like." 

By 2100, a study says that there will be twice as many people over 80 years old as children under five years old. Society and politics will definitely change.

Standing far apart from this global trend are African countries. 

from BBC
(cont'd tomorrow)

Work polls 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

So 11% of those who were asked the question said they had indeed lost their job due to the pandemic. More said that someone in their household had. Most (78%) thought back in April that the job would be restored. As of August 20, most thought that job was gone for good.

Nobody, even the experts, knew how this would all work out . . because it was the first time that governments all over the world actually closed down their economy because of a pandemic. Looks like we're starting to get a bigger picture of what that policy produced. 

Over the last two years, about half are holding steady in their personal finances, about a third are falling behind, and the percentage who are getting ahead has declined.

On an encouraging note, most people (68% in March and 70% in August) think their employer is trying to look out for their interests. 

from AEI

Work polls 1

A lot of polls have been taken weekly or monthly since last March to find out how people feel about the effect of the pandemic on their jobs.  Poll findings suggest that some American workers expect more bad news.

People were asked, Do you know anyone who was laid off as a result of covid-19? They checked off all the answers that applied:

Then, Of those in your household who were laid off, will they go back to their same job?

from AEI
(cont'd tomorrow)

Free speech 2

Yesterday you saw a quote from long-time professor Camille Paglia claiming that free speech should be a foundational value for every institution of higher learning, that university level students should understand that they will encounter other opinions and will be challenged.

That's where free speech comes in - both you and other people have a right to make the case for viewpoints you or they believe in. Maybe we can learn something from each other.

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Princeton Open Campus Coalition is a student organization dedicated to the “robust protection of important values such as free speech, free thought, and bold and fearless truth-seeking." They say Princeton has a heritage of tolerating diverse thought, and should not “rig the curriculum in favor of particular ideologies” or try to "re-educate" (coerce) students who dissent.

from The Federalist

Free speech 1

America's commitment to free speech, that is the freedom to speak in public without the threat of government force, was one of the first freedoms this country committed to. Why did our founders think it was important? 

We have to talk about that because the freedom to speak without fear or threat of force is being challenged. It's not universally valued, even by Americans, anymore. Now there are pockets of society where force is wielded to coerce what you may say.

But free speech is still in the constitution. Its defenders are very diverse. Here's a quote from Camille Paglia who has taught on the college level for four decades:

"As tuition costs rose stratospherically over the past quarter century, American colleges and universities shifted into a consumerist mode . . they don’t want to upset the paying customers! But the entire college experience should be based on confronting new and disruptive ideas. . .The ultimate values at any university should be free thought and free speech."

from Carpe Diem

Airlines jobs

Rumors hinted that airlines would have to reduce their workforce this fall, and it's coming in about a month.

• American Airlines expects to furlough or lay off 19,000 workers.
• Delta Airlines will lay off 2,000 workers.
• United Airlines may furlough 36,000 workers.

AA's president and its CEO put out a memo to their employees saying, “We hate taking this step, as we know the impact it has on our hardworking team members.” After 96% of their business disappeared in April due to the pandemic, business now is better but still far from normal. 

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"It's clear that the airlines, similar to a number of other companies that filed for bankruptcy protection, didn't have an adequate plan for a black swan event. Now, bereft of cash and customers, they need to go hat in hand to the government for more money to remain solvent." 

They're asking the federal government for another bailout, funded of course by American taxpayers.

from Forbes

Tesla value 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Over three years according to yesterday's chart, the BMW lost 44% of its original value. Those fourteen depreciated cars in the chart each lost 39-53% of their value over three years. Tesla Model 3 depreciated too . . but only 10.2%.

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There's the difference in the business model: Tesla customers retain much more value in their new car than other car buyers do. Customers retain tens of thousands of dollars of value over the years when they buy a Tesla.

Happy customers make for a successful business. That's one solid reason for a soaring market cap. How is value retained? Updates and improvements are available to Tesla customers free of charge, year after year. 

How do you get the newest improvements as an owner of any of the other cars? You buy the newest model. Again. And again.

from Clean Technica