This is what happens when you’re focused on delivering short term boosts for shareholders instead of long term advancement for national benefit. Do good work and the money will follow, but it looks like a loss for a little while.

The “China is eating our lunch” trumpers had no idea how good we had it back then. America is sprinting toward global irrelevance while China sprints toward global leadership. OPEC will pivot from the petrodollar to the petroyuan, and that will be the nail in the coffin. We halted aid which offered soft power while China started building trade routes to Africa. And trump immediately fucked with the chips act which would’ve granted us independence and self reliance in this sector, and then he fucked with China’s access to oil. Trump is so fucking dumb. Xi definitely told trump to be a good little boy and get the strait open or he would invade Taiwan and halt all chips to the US.

Samesies, but I think my knees are probably too trashed to snowboard anymore, so I’ll just double up on poutine while I watch hockey.

I can’t believe we haven’t started seeing work station docks for phones. Imagine carrying your laptop with you everywhere in your pocket, but then having a mouse, keyboard, monitor, and a few USB ports to do all of your laptop things without needing to buy a laptop. Maybe the phone mounts on top of the monitor to make use of its camera too. I’m sure these things are powerful enough for how most people would use that. Just not games and blender, and probably not video editing.

I could even see something like internet cafes come back. Rent a docked work station, plug your phone in, get shit done and take it with you when you leave. It seems redundant only because we still have libraries, but when the fascists recognize libraries as socialism and ban them, then you’ll see the value of my stupid fucking idea.

Big if true. They are claiming a lot of things, which would be exciting if I had any reason to believe that they’re anything more than claims, probably to juice investment. Sodium ion battery tech is infamous for being heavier per kW such that it’s less ideal for EVs, last for fewer power cycles such that it’s less ideal for EVs, and the cost savings to switch just hasn’t been enough to justify. Here, they’re claiming comparable energy density, 2.5-5x the power cycles, and under 10% of the cost compared to lithium ion, all without mentioning how they’ve managed to achieve all of this. I want this to be true, but I’m not jumping for joy until I see them actually selling this product that they claim will exist at this price that they claim it will be.

I would’ve been on board with sodium ion tech for home battery solutions connected to smart power management on a market adjusted power plan before ever seeing a breakthrough like this. Imagine subsidizing your home power needs with a battery during the hot summer day and then charging that battery overnight at 2am when there are minimal power needs on the grid. That application doesn’t really care about weight, and if you could just call somebody to come swap out your batteries every couple years, then the power cycle limit doesn’t really matter either. As for cost, early adopters of the idea could inject the capital for these companies to scale up production which would drive costs down. Suddenly, 20 years from now, who the fuck bothers to have a gas/diesel backup generator at their house anymore? Now if these claims turn out to be true, every home and business could utilize this plan.