I got shingles-ish rash after sitting in an outdoor jacuzzi in Salinas, California. Visited the urgent care and the Standard-trained doctor of immigrant farm laborers said it was related to the pesticides. Said he lost both parents in their 40s and suspects it was the indiscriminate spraying from the air in the 70/80/90s. Eye-opening and thought-provoking.
As a city dweller, I used to use Roundup along my fence line. Then I read an article in a newspaper about spraying chemicals when there is a breeze. So I read the label on the Roundup bottle and it said absolutely do not spray in any windy conditions. Next I polled my coworkers about this and they all said they just stay upwind!
The bottle label also said Roundup is active for up to 30 days, then I thought about my dogs. I no longer use any chemical for lawn care.
As to the plight of the farmers: I wonder if most of them bothered to used proper personal protection gear when spraying? Even if they had enclosed cabs, the chemical would still coat the tractor and tank surfaces which can be rubbed against at any time.
In many parts of the country whole counties smell of pesticide for a few days every year (and pig-shit another few days, but that’s a different issue)
I’ve lived in some of them, and my mom did a lot of by-hand weed-killer spraying (big plastic refillable jug with sprayer hose & wand) along a mile-plus of fence line, for years. Her generation didn’t really do PPE, so no respirator. Died relatively young of a Parkinson’s-adjacent dementia a little while back. No history of any of that in the family. Hm.
When the stories about Roundup started floating around, I switched to 30% strength vinegar with a squirt of dish soap in it. It kills weeds and undesired plants off just as quickly and effectively as Roundup did, but obviously it does not prevent new seeds from sprouting. It is indiscriminate, whereas Roundup selectively targets broad-leafed plants, so you want to avoid getting it on grass. I use a big tarp to mask off the grass if I am using it heavily along the lawn borders. It's very effective for things like borders, gravel paths, stuff like that.
Also, instead of smelling like a chemical factory, your yard will smell like salad dressing for a day or so.
Something that is supposed to be done to legally use it properly under FIFRA. There's a reason why it says in big letters READ ENTIRE LABEL BEFORE USE.
Its nuts to me there's so many people out there buying crazy chemicals and just #yolo'ing it all over the place.
Most modern home AC systems have, as a rule of thumb, ten percent fresh air intake. This varies, depending on the home size and state and local codes. On my home the fresh air vent is high up in my attic, which should protect me from over spraying of chemicals. However, if you have a window unit or an on ground system this will affect your exposure.
In an effort to save money, some will close their fresh air vent, this is not recommended because of the lack of air trade out in the system.
The weird thing about this sort of stuff is I believe genetics play a role. My father in law has worked in ag his whole life. Specifically spraying fertilizer and pesticides. He is obese and has a terrible diet. One would think he is riddle with cancer and died at 50. He retired at 67 and is overall somewhat healthy for someone who is 300 lbs. Life is weird.
Likely I'm very naive. But here goes... It seems that taxpayers fund a lot of research. This research is very valuable and lucrative. It finds its way into the hands of those who know how to profit from it. The taxpayer is again screwed paying exorbitant prices for said breakthroughs. Insulin is one area of interest to me and it very much seems to be the case in the diabetes world.
This was how NAFTA was sold. Move car manufacturing to Mexico and they will enjoy better living wages while we get more affordable cars. Except that I don't recall cars produced in Mexico ever getting more affordable. I'm sure corporate profits were great. Should probably look into this someday and see if my perception is correct.
I think a conversation about what the taxpayer should get back from university research funding is a good question, I personally don't like privatization of medical breakthroughs discovered with public money.
However, I am cautious to extend that argument to this situation. This is an attempt to use federal funding as a backdoor around the 1st amendment (from what I can tell). I'm not going to extend this administration any leeway when their bull in a china shop policies inadvertently break something I don't like. I don't want to improve taxpayer funding of research by losing the 1st amendment.
> Except that I don't recall cars produced in Mexico ever getting more affordable.
According to this site[0], new car prices were about 6% higher at the end of NAFTA in 2020 compared with at the start of NAFTA in 1994. Considering inflation on other things was on average much higher and also that more recent cars are significantly safer, more performant, and fuel-efficient—i.e. more provide more value—it does look like cars did effectively get cheaper.
Keep in mind labor is something like 10%-15% of the cost of a new car so even if you cut that down by 80%, including transport, and ignored recouping capital cost to actually move the production lines then you'd still need to move the production in less than 2 years to actually see the price decrease rather than "not move up as fast" at 3% car price inflation of the early 90s. Interestingly there was a dip in the price increase rate of cars at the end of the 90s https://www.in2013dollars.com/New-cars/price-inflation but it's too large to have been reasonably attributable to this trade change.
Between 1935 and today car price inflation is at 2.41% per year while general inflation is 3.56%. You may have not noticed. Since free trade it's been less than 2%.
The war has been going on for three years with no end in sight. What's the next move? What are your ideas to defeat Russia and take back the areas they've gained since 2014?
The US funded wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for 20 years with no idea what the next move was, no tangible end in sight, and stakes far lower. The so-called threat of weapons of mass destruction was enough to swiftly defeat Iraq's army, topple its government, and start an unprecedented manhunt for its leader.
Russia has invaded a neighboring country twice and spent the first two years of the war they started threatening nuclear weapons. They disregard all negotiated agreements and treaties, poison dissidents in countries the US is allied with, with impunity, engage in asymmetric warfare against Europe and the US, meddle in elections. The Russian government has nothing but contempt for a rules based world order.
Why, suddenly, is the US cowering back when the stakes are much higher and its direct involvement much lower?
Because this President campaigned on ending the long wars, which he opposed. I'm not sure where the confusion lies because Trump has been very clear about getting the US out of what he views as foreign entanglements.
I'm not passing judgement on it, just noting that what we're seeing is consistent with his campaign messaging.
> getting the US out of what he views as foreign entanglements
The point is our alliances are also foreign entanglements. These idiots didn’t think through that withdrawing from those means fewer weapons (and other) orders from America, more nukes pointed at America and less strategic depth between our adversaries and our shores.
The US hasn't withdrawn from any of its military alliances, and thus far has expressed no plans to do so.
I feel like this is where a lot of NATO commentary gets bogged down. There's a large group of people, conventionally referred to in US media as "the blob" (https://www.vox.com/22153765/joe-biden-foreign-policy-team-r...), who believe that the United States has an affirmative duty to engage in lots of global military interventions above and beyond the actual commitments it's made. I don't think they're lying - people seem to genuinely believe, for example, that the US is betraying NATO by cutting off support for Ukraine when most NATO members would prefer to expand support. But the North Atlantic Treaty simply does not contain a promise to align foreign policy in this way.
> people seem to genuinely believe, for example, that the US is betraying NATO by not supporting Ukraine
You’re correct in this being incorrect.
The informed concern is in Trump and Musk’s coziness towards Putin. That brings up questions around what, if anything, Trump would do if Putin annexed Latvia.
It does, and it would be wise for the US to take steps to defuse those questions. This is why US troops often (and have continued in the new administration) engage in various celebrations and joint drills with NATO allies; there was a detachment of US troops in an Estonian Independence Day parade late last month, which I'm quite confident will not be happening for Russia Day in June no matter how much US-Russia relations warm.
But reasonable questions about the strength of an alliance aren't the same at all as withdrawal from or betrayal of the alliance.
The NATO treaty doesn't imply in his wording any obligation for a military reaction to an invasion of a member of NATO. There's no penalty to just respond with a strongly worded letter, but there's an expectation an ally will react militarly.
Will your allies trust you any longer if you just follow the letter of the treaty? I don't think they will. More critically, nor will anyone else.
The US have historically positioned themselves as "defenders of democracy" and have multiple times used that positioning actively. It's inevitable for an expectation to be there for them to do just that. The US is free to violate expectations and just follow the letter of the treaties it has, it is a sovereign nation after all, but the surprised and frankly childish "we have no obligation!" reaction to the blowback is more unreasonable than the expectations for its support of Ukraine, particularly in how it has been handled politically.
One of the US's most recent foreign deployments is the Iraq War, which was based on a lie and extraordinarily unpopular among NATO members. I think abandoning Ukraine is very bad, and I agree it's unreasonable to expect Europe to be OK with it, but the US's current position in NATO was never based on a foundation of good behavior or uniform foreign policy alignment.
There was effectively uniform foreign policy between the US and its allies for the last thirty years, even under the first Trump presidency, and this included at least a certain degree of interventionism (first Iraq war, Yugoslavia...) which solidified international institutions (differently from the second Iraq war and Afghanistan, which weakened them).
Even if they didn't agree, EU nations and Canada at least sent their soldiers to die in Iraq and Afghanistan anyway.
Why are you surprised people expect such policy alignment after thirty years of it?
Why are you surprised people consider this a betrayal of what NATO stood for in the past, as a proxy of the democracies of the west? Just because there is no violation of the letter of the treaty?
I'm not sure why you keep saying "surprised". I'm not surprised. But it's not the case that EU nations and Canada sent their soldiers to die in Iraq; France in particular sided with Russia to block the Security Council from authorizing military action, leading to substantial tensions with the US and widespread disapproval from the public on both sides. European demonstrations against the war remain one of the largest mass movements in history.
I don't think it was surprising that the Iraq War led to anti-American sentiment, I don't think it's surprising that the current about-face on Ukraine is leading to anti-American sentiment, and I won't be surprised when it happens again in the 2040s.
> But it's not the case that EU nations and Canada sent their soldiers to die in Iraq
They did, not all of them but many did. On Canada I may be wrong, sure. I believe even Ukraine has KIAs in Iraq.
> France in particular sided with Russia to block the Security Council from authorizing military action, leading to substantial tensions with the US and widespread disapproval from the public on both sides. European demonstrations against the war remain one of the largest mass movements in history.
The Iraq and Afghanistan wars broke the model the US and EU had been trying to push until that moment, alienating the south of the world from it and providing certain countries with a justification for their future actions. France had the right of it in the UN assembly.
People were angry back then for similar reasons they're angry and shocked now, and once again it has to do with expectations.
I also don't believe the Iraq war alone is not really enough to deny the alignment between EU and US foreign policy in the last 30 years or so anyway. You won't have complete agreement with 30 nations involved ever.
> But the North Atlantic Treaty simply does not contain a promise to align foreign policy in this way.
I think this in your original comment highlights your surprise at what those people believe, or at least your not understanding it?
Yeah, agree that's what is happening. My original question wasn't rhetorical in nature. I would really like to know what would secure victory without escalating it to involve American troops on the ground and/or potentially a nuclear exchange.
I would as well. It's unclear to me what would change the picture there. Do they just need more of the same (155mm artillery shells, drones, tanks, etc.) or are there qualitative things that need to change?
This speaks to the fact that I haven't seen any clear "this is how we win it" proposals. I could understand why the details would be classified, but I've not seen broad strokes, either. Has anyone else?
I don't need a lecture on Russia's character. What I was curious to learn from you, or anyone, what could be done differently to defeat them? How would Russia respond if we send more advanced weaponry? Does Ukraine have the men to fight?
I'm getting downvoted but honestly looking for answers.
You can’t fully defeat a nuclear power. You can, at best, drive it back — if you’re willing to pay the price.
And that price means Europe will have to absorb a dramatic, sustained drop in quality of life — plus forced mobilisation.
Even the Poles - the most serious player in Europe right now — only have about 200,000 troops.
The British and French combined have maybe 40,000 soldiers actually capable of high-intensity combat. That’s enough for, what - four weeks of real war?
After that, there will be no volunteers. That means a draft.
So the real question is: Are you ready to be drafted to “defeat Russia”?
It’s a war of attrition now, which is a war of will and logistics. Can anything be done differently? I don’t know, but I don’t think so. Isn’t victory under these circumstances making the war so costly that your opponent must find a way out?
The US was doing that. Russia’s will has won out over the US’s, that is a defeat, and we can only hope next time it isn’t the same.
War of attrition. I thought we'd be further along after three years of sanctions and weapons but I wonder if Ukraine has the manpower to keep it up. From what I understand, Ukraine is drafting men ages 25-60 which may signal they need boots on the ground soon.
Ukraine probably does not. Is Russia willing to risk the possibility of US/EU troops ending up on the other side of the trenches? Probably we’ll never know now, and maybe that’s better. But is it better that Russia knows maybe three years and the US might call it quits?
My country, Norway, shares a border with Russia. We have 5.5 million people. Would the US abandon us because we’re running out of troops? That’s the question we’re asking ourselves.
The realistic answer is to say that Ukraine is going to be supplied with weapons for as long as needed, case closed. The whole Russian strategy after the initial blitz failure was to wait for Trump to get into power, who telegraphed to anyone with the brain, that he doesn't care about Ukraine and loves Putin very much. Russia can't do it forever, but it focused on appearing "strong" until the elections, the bet that paid off for them. Now imagine they were facing a prospect of non-friendly US administrations for decades, they would've already stopped.
Except Putin doesn’t need to outrun America — he just needs to outrun Ukraine.
There’s a finite number of Ukrainians, and an even smaller number of Ukrainian men actually willing — or physically able — to fight.
20% of the population already left, and around 1.5 million of them went to Russia. Another 15% are stuck under occupation.
Ukraine’s demographics were already a disaster after the WW2 wipe-out, the Soviet collapse, and 30 years of economic decline and emigration. Now they’re drafting 18 to 60-year-olds just to keep units filled - at 40%.
So what happens in a year or two, when there’s no one left to draft?
The Poles aren’t volunteering to die en masse, and they’re the only EU country with anything resembling a real army — and even that is one-fifth the size of Russia’s.
So who’s holding the line then?
The US Army? The Marine Corps?
Is anyone actually ready to send Americans to die in the Donbas?
Russian economy doesn't have enough juice to "outrun Ukraine" under the sanctions regime and the war intensity they maintain to impress the Westerners. It's not a "year or two", it's a decade at least.
Keep Ukraine on life support for a decade, hoping Russia collapses under sanctions?
Cuba’s still standing after 60 years. Iran after 40. The USSR took decades to fall — and none of them had China bankrolling their survival.
Russia’s economy bleeds, but it’s not cut off. China sends tech and machines, India buys the oil, and Europe keeps quietly paying top dollar for gas through backdoors.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s population shrinks, its economy is wrecked, and its army can’t fight without Western money, Western weapons — and soon, Western bodies.
Because if you actually want to push Russia back — not even collapse it, just push it back — that means European and American troops on the front line. Conscription, mobilized economies, the whole package.
Without a sustained meat grinder to chew up Russian forces, Russia just consolidates and digs in — with China keeping the whole thing afloat.
And if the West isn’t ready for that, who exactly do you think will still be standing in 10 years?
The only guaranteed winner? China — with Russia as a client state, Europe as a deindustrialized theme park, and America too exhausted to stop them.
If this is a game of who bleeds out last, Ukraine’s already done, Europe bleeds out first, Russia bleeds to its usual stupid level — and China walks away without a scratch.
The Westerners have been tirelessly making excuses about how it's impossible to defeat Russia for a while now, so forgive me for not being impressed, but the proposition is quite simple really — if you don't want to support Ukrainians fighting for themselves against Russia today, Ukrainians will be sent to fight poles and others for Russia tomorrow. Of course as it's clear now, the US wouldn't defend Poland either, fighting Canada is the new geopolitical priority, so there's that.
Agree that China is a winner of it all simply by virtue of not being mad, but as they like to say in Russia — it's not the evening yet.
Funnily enough, this is exactly Putin’s own logic — just flipped.
“We had to support those rebel Ukrainian states so Ukrainians fight them, not us.”
“We had to preemptively disarm Ukraine, or we’d be fighting Ukrainians inside Russia within five years.”
As for China — surely they’d be nervous if Taiwan was one-third of their population and shared a land border.
Ukraine isn’t just a border state, it’s alt-Russia, as Taiwan is alt-China (and so was Hong-Kong). A competing civilizational project trying to jump off the imperial train and build a Polish-style normal nation-state — and that makes it an existential threat. Not because Ukraine is strong, but because it offers Russians a dangerous glimpse of an alternative path — a Russian identity without the empire.
> Funnily enough, this is exactly Putin’s own logic — just flipped
Except Ukrainians ask the West for support to fight for themselves, so the West is given a rarest opportunity to do a morally right thing while furthering its own interests.
French land army is 77k total, with maybe 30k actually combat-capable — the rest are admin, logistics, and training. Add 9k Foreign Legion, but only a fraction of that is high-intensity capable.
With rotations, France can probably field about 15k troops on an actual frontline — and after that, it’s draft time.
For comparison:
* Russian armed forces: 1.1 million.
* 500k deployed in Ukraine.
* ~300k on the active frontline right now.
In terms of real land warfare capacity, France is in the same weight class as Belarus or Romania — and about 20 times behind Russia.
Even if you argue technical edge (better equipment per soldier), France has zero industrial mobilization capacity and no modern large-scale combat experience.
Ukraine needs to sustain significantly lower tempo than Russia and there are other options than boots on the ground. Simply flying in and shooting down slow-flying drones inside the Ukrainian airspace would probably give Ukrainian economy years of "runway". And any breathing room in the economy translates into more available manpower in the military and Ukraine still has millions available.
> I was curious to learn from you, or anyone, what could be done differently to defeat them
Russia doesn't have infinite capacity, their primary strategy was to take as much as possible at all costs as fast as possible, while waging info campaigns against the far right, in the hopes that Trump would come to power and cement a deal with them. If that option goes away, it strictly reduces Russias exit strategies. They can't escalate, because the west has more leverage and more options, it would be zero sum at _best_ for Russia. The West would likely hand them Crimea for peace, but giving them all of Donbas is too large a victory for Russia. The post WW2 orders foundational principle is that appeasement of land grabs leads to stronger positions for the grabber - see Hitler's numerous escalations before his full on attack as an example. Ideally you don't wait until the attacker is on your door step before fighting back, that's what this whole debacle is about.
Some of the options could have been:
- Continue on, but with aligned support from the left and right (read: Russian psyops campaign vs the US right failed). Probably enough on its own.
- Pressure China (tariffs) to pressure Russia
- Pressure Europe to increase commitments
- Offer Russia Crimea (already done ages ago, when their position was stronger)
- Setup an increasing schedule of more advanced weaponry
> How would Russia respond if we send more advanced weaponry?
AFAIK they haven't responded to the last several increases; what would they respond with? The Nuke is their last card, and in addition to pulling in more Western support would alienate the other players (India, China) who have their own leverage on Russia. IDK overall it seems like the only major limitation here was the psychology of Trump's party.
And what exactly is "The West" these days? A glorified open-air Continental museum, a failed British Empire with an army the size of Belarus, and a bickering hegemon half-convinced it should retreat to regional power status, house divided and all.
Europeans are still high on their own supply, fantasizing they’re global players, when in reality they’ve got no money, no energy, no industry, no credible army, no unity, and no diplomatic weight — not even within their own borders.
Europe spent decades as an American piggy bank and a strategic liability. Now the bill’s come due — and Uncle Vlad is doing Uncle Donald a favor, playing the bogeyman just well enough to scare Europe’s capital and industry back into the safe harbor of the New World.
And if Russian pressure helps deliver "MAGA in four years" by triggering capital flight from Europe to the US — is Ukraine really too steep a price for such a valuable service?
> the only major limitation here was the psychology of Trump's party.
The party that has 50/50 chance of winning the elections has been communicating to Putin all this entire time that they will hand him Ukraine when they win. Now they conclude that this strategy didn't help Ukraine and therefore it's time to hand Ukraine to Putin. Brilliant strategy, I wish them to enjoy their Russian friends who will definitely not screw them over very soon.
Help them win it. Like we did in two world wars in the 20th century. Here in the 21st century we get off easy and just provide material support, and intelligence; not blood. Hell of a deal to defend democracy.
Letting Russia keep the territories they control now is a great way to ensure that in few years when they rebuild their military potential they will attack again.
It also signals wars of conquest are back. That’s a message that will also be heard by revanchists in Beijing and New Delhi and expansionists in Tel Aviv, Riyadh and D.C.
Let the Ukrainians decide. The war could have been over if Biden and Musk hadn’t meddled in Kyiv’s strategy.
There is no peace with a Moscow that believes it can gain resources and mollify its population with wars of expansion. Pausing in Ukraine just allows for build-up for another wave. Maybe in Ukraine. Maybe elsewhere.
The war could have been over if Biden and Musk hadn’t meddled in Kyiv’s strategy.
This is the exact line of thinking that Hitler used to justify WW2. Surely we can all see this logic for the farce that it is. Ukraine never had a shot at winning this war and it’s only with massive international support that they’re able to maintain the fragile stalemate they now find themselves in.
> is the exact line of thinking that Hitler used to justify WW2
Hitler argued that he lost WWII because external powers were limiting the Nazis through diplomatic channels?! (Also, since when do we care about how Hitler justified things?)
> Ukraine never had a shot at winning this war
A significant amount of Russia’s naval and air assets were vulnerable to Ukrainian drone and missile fire in ‘22.
> it’s only with massive international support
You mean like the American Revolution, WWI for the Allies, WWII for the Allies and the Cold War for Europe?
> This is the exact line of thinking that Hitler used to justify WW2.
Hitlers literal claim was that Germany needs a living space, that Germans do not fit into German. Plus he claimed that the world is a war of races. Like, these were his literal justications.
The equivalent there would be Russian claims about Ukraine attacking them right before invasion. As of now, the Russian invasion itself is provably existing.
It is about zero paralel with "The war could have been over if Biden and Musk hadn’t meddled in Kyiv’s strategy."
With money and military/economic tensions for EU and US ? EU might have some interest in stabilizing the border and preventing future threats, but US literally has no interest there. And the only EU member that possibly had to worry about Russia is Finland, but they are in NATO now.
What motivation? russia is US sworn enemy, always was and always will be. Only fools don't take chance to make your enemy weaker, especially when its causing it to itself by their own stupidity and greed. US waged wars for less, far less.
I think from Trumps POV Russia is not that relevant and China is the rival. US has spats with Russia when they play globalist games, but Trump does not seem to be that interested in playing and Chinese are way stronger than Russia recently since they are growing their presence in Africa and SA.
Good thing US integritiy has no value anymore and US word is apparently worthless nowadays - otherwise I guess honoring the Budapest memorandum would make sense:
Did we (1) fail to respect their borders? (2) Threaten to use force, invade them or use those nukes against them? (3) Wage an economic war against them? (4) Fail to seek UN Security Council action in response to Ukraine being nuked? (5) Nuke them? (6) Refuse to talk to them about the agreement?
The thoughts are to NOT allow them to have time to rearm, get ready for another invasion, get another territory. And then again and again. That is all the peace right now would be - strategic pause so that Russia can get stronger for the next attack.
Also, Trump is supporting Russia while attacking Europe, Canada, Mexico, Greenland ... . Trump talks about annexing parts of Europe (Greenland) and annexing Canada.
Surrendering is not known to be a good negotiating position.
They were building into a good position with russia very depleted and economically on the ropes. Despite hold ups in US aid over the Biden admin. Pressing more aid and strengthening their position would be better for negotiating a peace. But quite simply Trump/Vance/Musk don’t want that.
If I remember correctly Trump promised to stop the war in 24 hours. The only way to do negotiate this fast is to totally diminish one side's position. When there no discussion, there is nothing to negotiate. The goal is not long standing peace, it is a plain populism and potential "peacemaker" title, and likely even a Nobel prize, if this wasn't derailed by Zelensky who refuses take words as a guarantee.
This whole thing started when they willingly disarmed in return for security assurances that didn't turn out to be worth the paper they were written on. It progressed when Obama failed to help them stop Putin in 2014, and now it's metastasized due to Biden's half-assed support and Trump's active antipathy.
That's exactly what I'm asking: what tools? The only thing I see is endless supply of money and ammo which means attrition. Russia will win in manpower but maybe not economically. I'm kindly asking to be educated with more than talking points we've all heard from politicians.
The most critical need is air defense: anti-air missiles and cannons capable of shooting down Russian missiles and drones. Long-range missiles are important too, because it is better to shoot the archer than to try take down every arrow. Long-range missiles can blow up the bombers that launch cruise missiles against Ukraine. This protects Ukrainian cities, factories, and military sites from further destruction.
Next, they need artillery to halt the slow advance of Russian ground forces. With the new unjammable wire-guided drones that were introduced early this year, Ukrainians have already successfully halted Russian advances in most sectors, but ample artillery support is even more effective. They need lots of artillery to blow up with a big bang everything that the Russians throw at them.
Finally, Ukraine must be equipped for counteroffensives. They need a large supply of planes, tanks, IFVs, and other vehicles to go from defense to attack and liberate occupied territories. Once Ukraine has the means to counterattack, it is up to them to decide how far they want to go before sitting down with the Russians to negotiate peace. Strong enough pushes by Ukraine may force the Russians to concede some areas without a fight, just as they previously withdrew from Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, and Sumy.
The current approach has been a slow trickle of aid in a naive hope that Putin might back down. That strategy has clearly failed. Ukraine needs full support, everything we can provide. This is both the moral choice, and the cheapest option in terms of money and lives.
It is really important to stress that Ukrainians do not expect others to fight for them. They are only asking for material support: weapons, ammo, vehicles. The rest they can handle on their own.
Honest question: Where do you deploy? What do you use for queues? Database? It's impossible to beat React for component libraries but, lemme tell you, I've struggled to be productive with Next when compared to Rails.
It's nonsense and worse: hype. I recently went through a bunch of Vercel apps and compared them to some of my favorite Rails/Django apps. The best performing Vercel apps were on par at best.
This is the sticking point for me. I get so many gains in Rails but I quickly sink into time-consuming component research/building. My eyes are always open for HTML/JS component libraries along the lines of react-aria.
My wife and I adopted two severely abused and neglected children and held out until they were 14. But the thing that we quickly realized is that our children's online life was only as secure as their friends most permissive parent. It still boggles my mind how many elementary-aged children had unfettered access to the internet. I suspect a lot of them unwittingly traumatized themselves.
I'm a full-time RVer and see this all the time with diesel trucks. The trucks get "deleted" and modded for more power and to disable the DEF system. Almost everyone I've known throughout the years begins having transmission trouble within months, especially after heavy load. A few swear by it. I've got a very expensive Cummins and I'm hellbent to leave it stock (and under warranty).
the issue isnt that they disabled their DEF system or deleted their DPF or EGR, it's that they probably installed new ECUs or flashed new fuel maps or something and boosted the power beyond the torque abilities of the transmission attached. In a lot of diesel RVs the transmissions are normally good to 2,000lb-ft, but the engines can be pushed beyond that pretty easily.
My truck owning friends like to blow through transmissions at 50-60K miles by driving their trucks like sports cars and aggressively short shifting while on power. None of them do “truck things” so it’s always a head scratcher as to why they continue to do this.
AFAIU modern diesels have lower combustion temperatures in order to limit NOx formation. I imagine this comes at a cost in thermodynamic efficiency.
Similarly particle filters, catalytic converters and whatnot reduce efficiency via exhaust backpressure.
So all in all, reducing non-CO2 emissions do come at a cost in CO2 emissions (or fuel consumed, if you like). Is it as much as 15%? No idea.. And is it all worth it? I'd argue yes, old-school diesel exhaust is nasty stuff.
Yes, this is the exact trade from Dieselgate, as well - higher combustion temperatures increase efficiency, reducing CO2 output, but at the expense of much higher NOx production. It’s easily 15% or more.
Exhaust back pressure is not an issue at all on diesels because they all run big turbos.
As for your later point...I very much concur. I started masking (n95) during the pandemic, and haven't stopped. I have a... large number of health issues including several respiratory ones. Exhaust in general really is nasty stuff. I live in pretty quiet smallish (100k) town, and it can be bad enough around here with all the pollen, but I wasnt recently on a whirlwind trip through the north east that saw me visit the dense urban cores of DC, Philly, Manhattan, and Boston. The difference in odor on the occasions I'd take my mask off on the sidewalk were kinda shocking as someone not used to it.
Out of curiosity do you live in the Great Lakes basin? I moved from Indiana to the West Coast, and I am always shocked at how bad the air quality is when I go back, even in rural areas. During wild fire season I monitor AQI, and when I zoom out I always see that Indiana is just as bad as the smokiest days on the West Coast.
Something about the large, hardly noticeable depression traps bad air at a regional level. I wouldn’t move back for a myriad of reasons, but everyone is always surprised when I list air quality as one.
Similar migration (IN->CA), it has changed my life. I had the worst sinus/migraine issues growing up and my breathing has dramatically improved after moving out of Midwest, even compared on the worst wildfire weeks out here.
Coming from NWI, I know the mills had a lot to do with subpar air quality, but I had similar issues when I lived on the far Northside of Chicago so it seems to be more regionally affecting.
It's a similar top reason on my list to not living there long term again
North Carolina. Locally it's not so much exhaust type stuff, but all the damn pollen, which I'm somewhat allergic too. Pine trees for miles. I'm about 50 miles inland from the coast so lots of wetlands so in the summer (Which means basically... late March through mid October - it's going to hit 82 here toomorrow) it's oppressively hot and humid.
> Exhaust back pressure is not an issue at all on diesels because they all run big turbos.
Not sure what you're arguing here. Isn't it quite obvious that resistance in the exhaust system means that the engine has to do more work to push the exhaust gases out; work that otherwise could be used to turn the crankshaft. Now of course a lot of that extra energy is wasted in any case, particularly if there's nothing like a turbocharger to make use of it.
Practically all diesels have turbos. You have literally have to go back to tiny tractor engines form
The 60s to
Find ones that aren’t. Turbos already provide a ton of back pressure. What’s downstream of that is pretty irrelevant
My tractor from the early 00s doesn't have a turbo. Plenty of VW and Mercedes Benz cars built in the 80s and 90s don't have turbos.
Backpressure aft of the turbo is something you really want to avoid because it makes the turbine much less effective. The whole point is to use a pressure and thermal gradient to do work.
I was under the impression the engine had to be run hotter in order to break down the NOx particulates in the exhaust gas recirculation scheme which led to higher fuel burn.
hmmm interesting. In a gasoline engine with high temperatures, NOx is produced, but it is fixed by the catalytic converter. So I guess that's not possible with a diesel, so they have to lower temperatures. That must lower the efficiency of the engine because (I think) the temperature difference governs efficiency.
Currently only smaller engines are EGR+DPF only. It takes having an SCR(&DEF) system to reduce emissions to legal limits on most larger engines now and the technology has been combined to have an engine with EGR+DPF&SCR(&DEF).
There are issues with engines and the active regeneration that has to occur in order to clean the DPF(basically engine has to get very hot and burn out the buildup) and also issues with DEF, which is an ammonia solution, both with the electronic dosing units failing and solution purity.
I’m curious how combustion temperatures are lowered like you say - is it a pv=nrt relationship hinging on changes in compression ratio or something like injector technology?
Yes, the latest generation diesel engines have lower compression ration than engines from a couple decades ago. Maybe something like 16:1 instead of 19:1. But also exhaust gas recirculation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaust_gas_recirculation
The U.S. diesel tuning crowd seemingly never discuss air/fuel ratios. This is a huge mistake. Also it's important to understand how much torque your transmission is rated for and to not stray beyond it. It's possible to reliably extract more performance than the manufacturer supplied but you have to understand what you're getting into. Turning it up to 11 and "rolling coal" is gonna get expensive, and it's super dumb.
Really depends on which crowd you're talking about.
The "I bought a tuner" or "I bought a kit" guys don't care or know enough to care.
Once you start talking about people who are reading turbo specs and whatnot people do very much care (because turbos and injectors are expensive and you want them both to be compatible so they get the most out of each other).
I disagree the diesel crowd doesn’t discuss air/fuel ratios but perhaps I’m misunderstanding something. Sizes and types of turbos, fuel pumps, injector nozzles are frequently discussed.
I do agree rolling coal is dumb but most/many daily diesel drivers don’t like it either, have always seen it as kind of a high school thing.
Maybe they've wisened up more recently but I've never seen an AFR gauge in a tuned diesel in the U.S., however they're as common as EGT and boost pressure monitoring elsewhere.
You can infer the same information it would get you via boost and EGT and whether or not your exhaust visually indicates unburnt fuel. You also don't need super precise AFR in a diesel like you do a high strung turbo gas engine.
Wide band O2 sensors are unreliably enough that they're kind of a pain to keep working accurately long term if you're not on a racecar maintenance schedule and if you aren't tuning things to those extremes you don't need that level of precision anyway.
Basically it just kinda adds up to "not worth it" for street vehicles
Those people are outnumbered 100:1 by people who simply deleted their trucks when the relevant parts gave them problem and kept the power at stock levels. Those people don't have a reason to brag anything like the "muh 100hp tune" people do so you don't hear about them.
Let me tell you how much time I spent with Claude and ChatGPT trying to get Next.js and Lucia with Postgres playing nicely. Never got it to work. Then I hit `rails new -d postgresql -j esbuild -c tailwind` and tried authentication-zero. Up and running in ~10 minutes.
It got me to thinking. Rails consistency and conventions are one of the biggest advantages for AI. While far from perfect, it seems the less code needed (Ruby/Rails) is a multiplier for AI.
