I was just on a trip to Eastern Europe. Turkish clothing store had a clearance center there, you could buy decent quality men's shirts for $4 and pants for $5. Sometimes better than what I've seen for more than 10 times that in the States and Western Europe.
Could be a situation where a hydrogen fuel cell makes sense (using current technologies, they're lighter than batteries, but very inefficient to charge/fill).
There have been some experiments with electric powered aircraft in the last 15-20 years - we've only recently gotten to a point (again using publicly available information from businesses) where they can reasonably be used for regional flights (say DC to Philadelphia or maybe New York, or LA to Vegas).
There may be much more dense batteries coming along, or this could be an application of a nuclear battery that was recently revealed in China, which right now only provides a small power output, but lasts a very long time (50 years) so does have a high energy density.
Hopefully we're entering a time of great improvements to quality of life... as it really does seem to have been getting worse in a lot of ways for decades at this point.
Reminds me of pop culture from the 50s and 60s saying we'd have flying cars by 2000...
Instead we got commercial supersonic flight in 1976, and got rid of it in 2002. 3 hours across the Atlantic, there was no reason to make the chairs any larger than an international premium economy seat (wider than an economy chair, narrower than a domestic first class chair).
Interestingly, Hollywood has pandered a great deal to the CCP censors in the last few years so they'd be able to sell movies in China. This is probably at least partly responsible for the declining quality of Hollywood's movies...
An odd one, some Mercedes trucks are made in Tuscaloosa, Alabama even if you buy one in Europe. When that factory first started production, there were some quality issues, but they seem to be better now.
But the Big 3's cars (not trucks) are uncompetitive... and the Big 3 make a lot in Mexico and Canada... while Toyota and Honda have US plants for the US market.
Another thing that's backwards: Lenovo builds a lot of ThinkPads in North Carolina... but Lenovo is a Chinese company. While most American brands other than some Dell and HP are made in China...
Jack Daniels is oddly cosmopolitan and is all over the place in Europe.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=eiyfwZVAzGw Straight to Jail.
(Since no one posted it yet)
It seems a lot of the transplants to Florida from New York are pretty red - R party registration has only been increasing. And DeSantis mentioned this statistic a few times over the last few years.
I think it's just become more polarized - Florida is more red, and New York* is more insufferable, as it is full of the "Orange Man Bad" types...
*New York City. Upstate is more red but is too small compared to the NYC area. But the City has become outright unlivable post-2020.
Didn't the Army have to lower PT standards for general enlisted again due to too many obese weaklings?
I'm concerned we'll have an Army of Private Pyles (although he was a Marine during a draft... who may be able to be a bit more picky...)
It needs to be affordable on a single income. Right now housing, food, living in general are far too expensive.
Plus the quality of life issues. If you're making the big money as an employee now, you likely depend on a big city... and it's not remote anymore. So either you spend even more to live closer to work, or an extra hour or more a day unpaid in the car or train... and it's still too expensive for the salaries (if you look at NY, Miami, California, etc...)
Constitutional Amendment, which can be ratified by 2/3 of the States and then comes into effect.
Congress can also enact an amendment, but would be unlikely to enact this.
Fun trivia, the 27th amendment, the last one ratified, was proposed as part of the Bill of Rights in 1789. It basically stipulates that if congress votes to change their wages, it does not take effect until the next congress sits, so as to be more difficult to vote to enrich themselves.
It was ratified by the States in 1992.
Three of the four States that did not ratify it should surprise no one. They are New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Mississippi.
New Jersey, Illinois, Rhode Island, California, Hawaii and Washington ratified it in the 90s after it had already been certified.
This is unfortunately a major issue. Cadillac sells in Europe. But they don't sell a lot...
(Ford is an exception, but they have a German design and manufacturing division - they do sell a lot. Ever wonder why the Focus ST was so good? It was designed in Germany and later imported into the US.)
I wish we could be making better cars, appliances, and foods in the States...
US, Mexico, and Canada all don't have exit customs - you can drive or walk into another country and will only be questioned on arrival by the country you arrive in.
You can also fly out - boarding an international flight is the same as boarding a domestic flight.
Whereas in the EU/Schengen area, and Colombia, for example, you pass through immigration when departing as well as arriving (the international gates at the airport are, for immigration purposes, outside the country. This also allows changing planes on flights between third countries without clearing immigration).
If it helps anyone, scored.co has a poorly documented API - someone wrote a C++ library: https://github.com/thansen0/scored_communities_api
Scored themselves said to use your browser's debugger: https://help.scored.co/article-categories/api-integration/
In theory, a separate service could be created.
Overhead of brick and mortar store in the US is too high, I don't think I'd make enough profits. And this can likely be found on Amazon, unfortunately.