The story of scurvy is way more complicated that this article would have you believe. Lind partially shot himself in the foot by attempting to a make lemon juice more portable (and easier to store on a ship). He did that by boiling down the lemon juice to form a "rob." But he never tested his rob and had he done that, he would have realized that the boiling of lemon juice destroyed that vitamin C inside (this is in addition to the issue of copper pots, etc). So folks at sea, used the rob, and it didn't work. And then there is how Captain Cook muddle the issue, but because he had a big reputation and that carried way.
The history here is complex and very unsatisfying due to gaps in the historical record, but it' darn interesting.
What I don't understand is why science museums aren't more geared toward adults. For me, it's hard to tell the difference between a children's museum and a science museum.
* Fewer adults interested in science than children. Children are learning new things. Magnets! Pulleys! Not many adults (outside HN) are going to get excited about a pulley.
* The people making the museums don't have sufficient scientific knowledge to do science for grown ups.
* Exhibits for children are much easier to make robust, and probably cheaper to make.
That said I do think it would be really cool if there was a science museum for adults. There's all sorts of things you could show.
I'm having trouble understanding how a breakup addresses the allegations in the case? Wasn't this all about Google paying Apple for search exclusivity on iPhones? How does a breakup address that?
Asking why there isn't enough housing is like asking why water is wet. The answer is state/local government regulation.
There's an old saying "your margin is my opportunity" and I suspect that the current crop of homes that are built have decent margins, but in a deregulated market an entrepreneur could come in offer more affordable housing options with lower margins.
You can see this in vehicles. Nobody complains about the vehicle affordability problem because there are far fewer regulations in the transportation industry (don't get me wrong, there are regulations, but not a constraining as you see in the housing market). There's a vehicle at every price point. You got bikes, then ebikes, mopeds, scoters, motorcycles, sub compacts, compacts, full size, trucks, suvs, and all the way to crazy expensive sports cars.
You don't see that in house because affordable housing is not a good business. It's impossible to offer options at the lower end of the market because of zoning laws, environmental impact regulations, a difficult permitting process, nimby's, and affordable housing politicians that are really big proponents of affordable housing except "they have question about this particular housing project."
Here is a terrific video that everyone should watch that shows how insanely difficult it is to make affordable housing. A
Sometimes what you need is less government regulation, not more.
edited sentence "You don't see that in house it's not a good business." to You don't see that in house because affordable housing* is not a good business.
Housing is actually a good business. Otherwise everyone starting from upper middle class families to trillion dollar hedge funds would not clamor to get into it. Also, there might be regulations, but there is also lots of incentives and tax benefits which makes up for it.
Of course it's a good business. Just not at the price points people can afford.
Watch the video I liked to above. It's about a person that owns a laundromat in SF who wants to convert the building to affordable house. He basically wants to do the right thing, but the regulations make it impossible. It was EYE OPENING for me.
Trillion dollar hedge funds only got into housing recently when they realized NIMBYs would severely limit new construction. Before that speculating on housing didnt make sense.
I see these posts and just shrug. Tech companies have lifecycles. There is that early startup energy where "we're all in this together." Then, if they're lucky, success and growth, but the startup mentality remains. But as the company grows, it can't maintain the startup culture. It's simply not possible. And then companies mature and you have bureaucracy and leaks and empire building and layoffs, etc. It's inevitable.
What surprises me about Google is not that its changing, but that it's taken so long to change.
I love that Toyota is forward thinking, but where does the ammonia come from? The most common way to make it is via the Haber-Bosch process, which, as I recall, consumes 1% of global energy product as of today. I wonder what that number would look like if we manufactured fuel that way?
Pretty sure this is best read as an alternative to Hydrogen for the "future renewable energy will be plentiful, but sometimes we still need higher energy density".
It clearly wins by one measure (it's easier to make it a liquid, which is easier to handle than a gas), but I'm not enough of a chemist to really understand the table in the link downthread for how it compares by other measures.
Disney is under some pretty serious financial pressures, but it's not for sale. The most profitable part of the company is the parks, and they will never sell those. But what might be for sale is some of the IP - eg. Lucas Film, Marvel, or Pixar. But what I'd expect to see first is some sort of license where Apple TV+ gets Disney Plus content shortly after it's released on Disney (or maybe they get rights to distribute after a series has completed on Disney Plus.) That would help Apple get a real handle on the revenue opportunity there and if it works, then make a play for overall IP ownership (assuming that Disney gets desperate enough)
I'm a reformed news junkie. At one point, in addition to consuming local, national, and cable TV news daily, I also read three newspapers a day (I was young and hand more time on my hands back then) and listened to NPR. But my confidence in the news was shattered long ago. It started with the OJ Simpson trial. Back then I was between jobs and had time on my hands so I could watch the actual trial, which was televised on CourtTV. Day after day, the prosecution would lay out their case and then the defense would destroy it. OJ really got his money's worth with that defense team. At night I would then watch the news coverage, which only told the prosecution story. I kept say, "did we watch the same trial?" Long before the glove didn't fit, I was 100% confidence he would be acquitted. But the world was shocked when jury came back with the not guilty verdict because they only knew one side of the story.
After that I started to consume news with a more critical eye. Another story I remember was on NPR and the narrative they wanted to tell was that streaming music services were screwing the independent musicians. The example they gave was how a radio station might play an artist song and get some sum of money per play, but a much, much lower payment on a streaming service - of course they completely forgot to mention that a radio station is a broadcast where a single play could be heard by millions, but a single play on a streaming service was only heard by a single person.
At a certain point, after you catch a few of these stories, you start to wonder what other stories aren't true that you're not catching. And you lose all faith in the institution (it's super depressing) The question I like to ask folks who excuse the news is this - if a close friend of yours lied about something important to you and you caught them, how many times would you have to catch them lying to you before if you'd stop trusting them all up? It's not many 1 maybe 2 times. The news has done this to us all over and over.
What's the solution? Like it or not, we really need journalism in this country. I tell folks that the collapse of the news industry is one of the greatest problems in this country that nobody is trying to fix.
The only solution I've been able to dream up is this. Create a tax on digital advertising and cloud computing (these are arguably one of the biggest causes of the decline in journalism). Then use that money to create 3 quasi governmental news organizations (like the post office or amtrak). Make it pay journalists like software engineers, with the expectation that they waive their voting rights for life. (note that Bob Woodward once said he doesn't vote to mitigate bias). Then set up an system where each news agency is incentivized to monitor the other news agencies for accuracy. If they think they're misrepresenting the facts, they can present that to collection of ombudsman* to judge. If it's deemed that they misrepresented the facts, they lose budget. Do it enough, and they're out of business and and the money is used to form a new news agency.
*Note ombudsman, once a mainstream in the news, seem to have all but vanished.
Anyway, that's my story and my idea. What's yours?
The core issue is that there isn't a free market at work here and there are conflicting motivations that are preventing progress toward that model. One the one hand, people want higher education to be affordable and cost effective (which requires a free market) but on the other hand they want higher education available to all even if that means taking on an ROI negative course of study.
For example, if we allowed student loans to be a bankruptable form of debt, then over time, certain schools and majors would be unable to get loans, which then could have a series of economic responses such as universities increase tuition for ROI positive majors to support ROI negative majors or some departments might close or we might see consolidation of universities specializing in certain types of education.
It pains me to say this, especially since I saw Star Wars in the theater over 10 times when it first came out, but you have a point.
When I was a kid, I saw Star Wars over 10 times in the theater, and I LOVED it. For the time, it was revolutionary science fiction film. But I remember after the first time I saw it with my dad and I excitedly asked him "what did you think?" He said it was over rated. I remember being crushed by that comment, but now.. I dunno. The plot is pretty weak and predictable.
But I think that's why a lot of fans are so disappointed by the new Disney star wars material. Rogue One seemed like such an elevation of Star Wars - Star Wars for grown ups. And the hope, at least of me, was that Disney+ would run with that. But after Boba Fett, I just walked. It was atrocious.
The history here is complex and very unsatisfying due to gaps in the historical record, but it' darn interesting.