Apple doesn't seem to have a vision for the future. Elon is working on global energy sustainability, self-driving cars, underground tunnels, global internet, reusable rockets, neuralink, free speech, etc... Apple was rumoured to be working on a car... now a VR headset... It feels gimmicky. It feels like: "let's wait to see what becomes popular and then copy it".
"Where there is no vision, the people perish" - Proverbs 29:18
Elon Musk's idea of "working on free speech" seems to be limited to "let's unban a bunch of neo-Nazis and antisemites, most notably Kanye West, and tank the value of Twitter and Tesla in the process".
You're spot-on with Apple - but on the other side, maybe it's not bad to have an example of a company that is fine existing as it is and not needing to participate in the destructive pseudo-innovatism race that has led to shit like thousands of altcoin scams/"Web3".
I'm pretty sure the next two vehicles are a small affordable hatchback and a van. I least I hope so! I have a Nissan Passenger NV 12-seater van for our family of 9 and it's not fun paying $150/tank to fill up : S
No till drilling is the ultimate solution because you get ultra productive land without disrupting the soil. It's an incredible advancement in industrial tractor PTO accessories.
Another huge win that a lot of people are not aware of is using mobile electric fences to quickly move cows through fields. They eat, poop, stomp and move on. That adds an incredible amount of fertility into the ground without needing fertilizer.
For those interested in industrial production of healthy food with healthy soil (+18 inches of rich organic porous soil with trillions of cool characters, diversity and nutrient sharing super highways), check out "Kiss the Ground" on netflix (great intro to soil), then the "The littlest big farm" on netflix (see a 7 year transformation from barren monoculture hydrophobic dirt to rich soil farming in California), then check out youtube for Gabe Brown (soil expert), Joel Salatin (regenerative mobile cheap farming nut), Richard Perkins (regenerative farming expert), and Allan Savory (holistic management, how animals help soil).
What you state isnt far off, as tractors have got bigger so the plough cuts deeper and the soil erosion increases.
When horses pulled ploughs, they didnt cut too deep into the soil so that white root mass you find in soil which hasnt been dug over in years is not far from the surface, but now you have to dig several inches deep before you hit any root mass of sorts, when todays tractors have been over it. Its the root mass which helps reduce the soil erosion, but also have plenty of small ponds and lakes also keep the water table up.
Whats also interesting, there is only one agricultural machinery manufacturer that I know of who is R&D'ing smaller equipment to make into robots, and they are German, in order to tackle the soil erosion, and make their equipment more usable in smaller fields.
Because Japanese food is so expensive partly because of the lack of land, you can be sure its of the highest quality, similar efforts are being seen in the UK to make the food quality higher whilst increasing biodiversity with smaller fields.
The days of stack it high sell cheap are coming to an end, partly because the pollutions levels are so high, and the poor quality food is shortening people's lifespans which is now only just showing up in data, despite retirement ages being raised.
>They eat, poop, stomp and move on. That adds an incredible amount of fertility into the ground without needing fertilizer.
The bacteria levels need to rot the poop down, so you are better off muck spreading with from old piles of poop, just like any compost, than you are from fresh. One of the other things I've seen farmers doing here in the UK, is spreading seaweed on fields to increase certain minerals.
The bacteria levels need to rot the poop down, so you are better off muck spreading with from old piles of poop, just like any compost, than you are from fresh
If I understand you correctly then you are advocating for not letting them poop on the fields?
That would mean not letting them graze on the fields either. So you're back to a barn. With associated problems.
That can also be labor intensive. Now you have to actually muck the barn and compost it all, then spread the compost on the fields.
Or you just let the cows graze, poop and stomp and you do nothing (except move them around from field to field).
No they can poop on the field, but what you are lacking in many fields today is any form of shelter beit from trees or some other type of building for adverse weather conditions. Once the pasture got wet, with too many animals on it got destroyed, turned into mud and then you got your mini dustbowls.
Animals will seek shelter if its available, but fields are a man made thing, much of the planet used to be covered in trees but the agrarian society started off this planets deforestation, which is being repeated in parts of the world today like the Amazon.
Not only that but that shed poop besides being compostable also served as a source of fire fuel which is still used today in parts of Africa.
Ideally we would have plenty of pasture for animals to graze on, because even dairy herds will go and get milked when they want and not when the farmer schedules. This is a behaviour that's been seen in some dairy factory farms with automated milkers, the elephant in the room is we dont have enough planet earths in which to feed todays human and pet population unless we go all vegetarian or ramp up the production of lab grown meat.
In 2008 a US lifestyle needed 4 or 5 planet earths, today some suggestions put that as high as 8 planet earths, where as UK and Europe have remained mainly the same, ie a UK lifestyle needs 2.5 planet Earths and a European lifestyle needs 2 planet Earths.
I think we're mixing a lot of different things there and moving from one thing to the next.
I like decomposing things. Not in the poop rotting sense but in the divide and conquer sense.
1. Wet pasture with too many animals can destroy the pasture.
Sure. Put less animals. Also, make better pasture, i.e. pasture that is not grazed down to 1/4" with almost no protective function of the grass/roots. Move the animals well before it reaches that level and you prevents dustbowls in different ways. One of them being that the sun can't actually reach the soil. You basically never want sun touching bare soil on your pasture.
2. Shelter
Now this is very true. And it's bad for the animals if they have no shelter. They heat up beyond levels that are healthy for them and they will use more water, which both increases your water needs as well as your labour needs to get water to them. Or resource inputs to lay pipe to get the water to them, which requires maintenance etc. I guess you get the point / know already. So yes, divide the huge fields into smaller fields that are lined with trees that the animals can naturally gravitate towards when needed.
3. Poop as fuel
The poop as fuel is collected wherever it happens to turn up. Which in said parts of Africa can be on a large dustbowl.
4. Not enough earths
I think this is overstated sometimes. Yes, if we use the US farming practices it's probably true. There are alternatives. Unfortunately I don't know the name. I saw this documentary on a flight quite a while ago.
Basically many of these parts of Africa that can't feed themselves were able to do so just fine before the westeners arrived and removed all the trees and made fields out of everything. Now it's barren earth. There was that one guy who - over lots of years and twists and turns I don't remember exactly any more - who figured out that the trees they bulldozed are not actually gone. The root system is still there. Below the surface and if you protect the tiny branches that appear from time to time from animals these grow back into beautiful trees that create shade for people, animals and further growth. He basically went around the villages, talking to elders that still remember the old times, making them his allies to teach children and younger adults to care for the tiny trees and to nurture them back to full growth / life. That was quite a while ago and it works. Many many villages can now feed themselves again.
All that to say: they basically went from a situation where even 10 "earths" worth of the situation they had would not have sufficed, a single earth worth of properly managed trees and ecosystem is perfectly capable of feeding them.
> Sure. Put less animals.
So how do feed the Human population? Either force everyone to become vegetarian to free up the land or start reducing the population through stealth means, reducing lifestpans or invest in new technologies which can regreen the deserts as seen in places like Ethiopia or the deserts in the middle east?
Fish stocks are already not as abundant and the temperate shifts seen in the oceans is affecting fish stock in territorial waters. During the mini ice age which ended in 1857(^), the colder water saw cod stock which is highly temperature sensitive (likes 7DegC water) move down towards the UK.
(^)This is why the media show global warming starting from this point in time.
Stealth means, GM crops like soy beans which have reduced omega3 content to reduce the soy beans going rancid as quickly, mean the neutrophil immune system in humans and lifestock feeding on this will be rendered less effective due to less omega3 intake. Ergo more drugs needed, great for chemical companies, and makes me wonder why govt's even bother!?!
>Yes, if we use the US farming practices it's probably true.
Global Warming. Despite the fact that CO2 levels mean more for vegetation and less need for fertilisers, because the co2 level on this planet have been way way higher, I think over double what they are today, the difference with the past, is humans need more space so that homeostasis with co2 levels and vegetation is broken.
Personally, I dont know why more isnt spent pumping desalinated water into the deserts especially considering the solar cells that could provide shelter for deserts, around the Sahara or the middle east. Would the reflection of solar cells affect the upper atmosphere much? I dont know, but cant be any more disruptive than ionosphere heaters pushing the ionosphere out into space causing leo satellites to crash to earth when they encounter atmosphere in their path.
>a single earth worth of properly managed trees and ecosystem is perfectly capable of feeding them.
Provided the human population is managed. Its only exploded in line with the discovery of oil, before then the human population was either under a billion or arond a billion or two.
If you mismanage the resource you have, you will not be able to feed said human population. A dustbowl feeds 0 people. This is what happens in said parts of Africa. The well managed pasture or well managed tree'd Africa feeds whatever number > 0 it feeds. Bulldozing it all may feed some more people initially, especially w/ petroleum based fertilizer, causing population growth. Until it turns into said dustbowl and now you have an African country that is dependent on imports to survive and people are still suffering and dying of hunger. That's also what I meant with the single earth being capable of feeding these people. With the dustbowl American bulldozers created in Africa, they are dependent on imports of corn and rice and wheat. With trees growing again they can graze livestock and plant traditional millet that is well adapted to their parts of the world and feed themselves again.
Stealth means ... great for chemical companies
I'd first go with Occam's Razor here. The simplest answer is probably that it's not a conspiracy but pure and simple greed. That's also where people like Gabe Brown might be able to get to people. While it creates healthy soil and is "good for the environment", in the talks I've seen he specifically touts the profits he's making with his methods. This might be the one 'trick' that works in the end.
I dont know why more isnt spent pumping desalinated water into the deserts
I've like to come back to the previous exhibit of Occam's Razor and money and greed. None of that seems like it's particularly cheap, effective - what would 'flooding the desert' actually do? - or making any money.
> as tractors have got bigger so the plough cuts deeper and the soil erosion increases.
The size of your equipment does not dictate the depth you have your drill or planter set to.
> When horses pulled ploughs,they didnt cut too deep into the soil
Yes they did. Plowing completely turns over the top soil.
There are other things at play too like row spacing. We used to plant at 36", eventually we went down to 30", some of our neighbors even went down to 20" or so.
>Yes they did. Plowing completely turns over the top soil.
Once metal ploughs were introduced they could start to cut deeper into the soil, but the earliest horse drawn ploughs could not cut deep because they were wood as seen in some parts of the world today with oxen pulling wooden ploughs.
However is ploughing even needed today?
This practice was started after Brexit, and its reduced fuel costs on the farm because now there is no need for ploughing and the dustbowl situations are extremely unlikely to occur.
I expect you're right about the depth of the till, but it has more to do with than just the roots. Healthy soil is a living ecosystem, and tearing it up wreaks havoc on that ecosystem. To deal with that, we apply synthetic nutrients, which do feed the plants in the short term, but the soil continues to degrade over time, requiring ever increasing quantities of chemical inputs. It's not a good situation over the long term, and it doesn't take a super computer to figure that out.
I am confused by how this would avert some of the issues described in the article. It describes dustbowl conditions as evaporating water out of the ground. Does no-till drilling solve this?
Healthy soil accepts water and retains it. Soil does not like to be naked, it always tries to cover itself so that it can grow a jungle of underground creatures and nutrients superhighways. Every time you till (cut up the jungle to get rid of weeds and give crops a chance to grow), you complete destroy all organic life! That soil turns to dirt that can’t accept water (drought) and can’t retain it (floods and top soil erotion). No till drills surgically insert seeds so that you can grow diverse crops simultaneously without destroying the underground jungle! Check out Gabe Brown to learn more about no till drill crops.
I've seen another step described where you bring in a mobile chicken coop a few days after the cows have departed to eat the insects that arrived to eat the poop.
Also keeping the cows a little while means they eat up all the "weed" plants and not just the tastier stuff —"eat your vegetables" type of thing—while if they free graze they only take the best tasting grasses and move on.
When Burger King "bought" Tim Hortons in 2014 (I believe this was a tax evasion effort by Burger King to leave US and "merge" with a Canadian food company), the whole experience went to pot. This was a Canadian institution. I won't even step foot in a Tims anymore, the food, the customer experience, the app, it's all junk.
Interesting. My first trip outside of Europe was my honeymoon in 2008 to Canada. Various tour guides told us that Tim Hortons (“Timmy’s”) was a Canadian institution.
Since then I’ve travelled a fair bit in US cities and a little in Canada and the only real difference I can see is that Canada has a Tim Hortons on the corner.
I mean, I'd still call it a Canadian institution, but it's not good.
> Since then I’ve travelled a fair bit in US cities and a little in Canada and the only real difference I can see is that Canada has a Tim Hortons on the corner.
Depends where you go. There's probably more of a different cultural feel in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces. e.g. Café Olimpico is a Montreal institution that feels quintessentially Montreal. (And the US has places with very different cultural feels to each other - of places I've visited, Honolulu isn't very similar to Billings - but I'm less familiar with the US than Canada.)
I was amazed by many things with our 3 weeks in Canada, including how cheap car hire for a massive (Ford escape) car was, how wide the roads were, how off road logging roads were
But one thing that stuck with me was seeing things I’d only ever heard of in tv/movies - Wendy’s and Dairy Queen come to mind.
But I’d heard of them. And of course Starbucks (which we had in the U.K.)
Never heard of Tim Hortons though, which I guess shows the relative strength of a medic an cultural exports vs Canadian cultural exports.
As a Canadian, this comment annoys me. It only makes sense to me if the only Canadian city you’ve been to is Toronto (and maybe Niagara or something as well?), and aren’t particularly observant.
It annoys you that Tim Horton’s is considered a Canadian institution?
I get that it’s mainly owned by a Brazilian company now, and quality has gone to all hell, but it will probably always be a part of Canadiana due to its history.
I wondered why people thought so highly of Tim Hortons. I’ve only been there post-merger, so that explains it. It still doesn’t explain how anyone drinks the swill that is Starbucks, though.
Technically, I believe they still bake things, but they certainly don't prepare the doughnuts from scratch on-site anymore. Indeed, quality declined spectacularly when their slogan changed from "Doughnuts" to "Always Fresh".
I think it's too little too late. It's so much more than EV now, it's about FSD, AI, data collection, charging networks, owning mass battery production, automation of manufacturing, remote software updates, the center screen interface, service to the home networks, direct to customer sales infrastructure, solar panels on your home to charge your car, etc... I believe every car company is 10 years late responding and Tesla will destroy them like Apple iPhone destroyed Blackberry, Nokia, etc... If Ford can mass produce the electric F-150 before cybertruck hits, they may stand a chance (#1 selling vehicle in NA), but again, they are behind on so many of the other factors. I think Tesla will do it in a more streamlined way, more profitability and are ultimately heading towards a robo taxi network which isn't even in the competitors' visions.
you seem to be a little too biased towards Tesla? are you invested? some of your points make no sense and "robo taxi network which isn't even in the competitors' visions." and yet Waymo has already done exactly this... Tesla can't even navigate in a closed loop tunnel...
Tesla is integrating vertically, like mining lithium. Both as hedge against supply disruptions and to squeeze efficiency.
> ...like Apple iPhone destroyed...
Also copying Apple's monopsony playbook. Tesla bought booked the production of "gigacasting" gear. Just like Apple bought all the CNC machines (for making unibody cases) and miniature harddrives (for iPod) and... So competitors can't emulate, even if they wanted to and had the capital.
Vertical integration like that sounds good, but often ends up a distraction. Toyota tends to be more of we do the Engine and frame, and outsource the rest.
My take on it is that when MSN Messenger came out, they stored the contacts "in the cloud" (which was a new concept back then). So let's just say hypothetically that Windows 95 crapped the bed with a true blue screen of death, you'd re-install MSN Messenger and bam, your contacts were back. ICQ kept contacts local and if you lost them, you lost them.
True, but they caught up within one year and had the feature. Then they heavily bloated the client, then released a "lite" version which really brought them back on the map. Then facebook came and suddenly it was cooler to communicate non-instantly for some time. :)
Do you remember that feature that you could use to "call someone's attention"? It would make a lot of noise and the window would shake like crazy in your face.
IT was great for dating around 2000. Search by gender, age, city, open conversation and try my luck. Ended up in ~4 year long relationship from random contacts.
I feel very happy to be a Canadian right now. The CRTC's (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) laws on net neutrality are considered to be some of the strictest laws in the world.
Here is a great quote from a 2017 music streaming case requiring all data to be counted against a user's data cap, regardless of its source:
"the aim [of] the decision was to encourage Internet service providers to compete on price, speed and network quality instead of acting as a gatekeeper." - Chairman of the CRTC, Jean-Pierre Blais
And yet Canada has one of the highest costs for Internet bandwith (~80 CAD for 75 Mbps, data capped at 500gb), no phone costs covered (another ~80 cad month)
Ya, it's pretty bad. Resellers are at least at a little nicer. There's rules regarding how much Canadian Telecoms have to charge resellers access to the network. I get 150Mbps for $70 no data cap from a reseller called VMedia. But we are generally hosed in Canada for internet services.
I'm in the heart of San Francisco, and I get 40Mbps at $90/mo USD (Comcast). Kind of pathetic that that's my only option in the tech capital of the world.
Man, I've been looking for the name of a Sega Genesis game for a long time and couldn't remember it. I just saw it on your site. "Atomic Rob-Kid" was one of the best games I've ever played. Super hard and super frustrating, but it has a great feel!
"Where there is no vision, the people perish" - Proverbs 29:18