Vultr is pretty well known amongst the small technically innovative "cloud" hosting companies, and IMO has better offerings than DO. They also have a peering agreement with Backblaze and Cloudflare; no transfer costs between any of the three.
> This keeps getting repeated.. but when I was studying, I bought used IKEA furniture, moved it around several times to different apartments, and then sold it again when I moved from that city.
> I've also renovated my house recently which involved disassembling and reassembling some IKEA furniture. They're still fine.
Indeed, I still have all of my original IKEA furniture after 7+ moves - none have "fallen apart". They just require partial disassembly to move. My IKEA desk and Billy bookcases are >20 years old and in great condition.
I'm not quite sure how people manage to be so destructive when moving.
Sell all your furniture and all but irreplaceable and critical belongings, possibly including selling any cars you may have. Use a few thousand dollars of that money for airfare or gas money and move yourself and minimal belongings to a new location. Stay in a long-term-stay hotel (<$100/day) for a week or two until you can get the cheapest apartment you can find. Slowly repurchase essentials as needed. Done.
> Sell all your furniture and all but irreplaceable and critical belongings, possibly including selling any cars you may have. Use a few thousand dollars of that money for airfare or gas money and move yourself and minimal belongings to a new location.
We’re talking about the poorest people in society here so let’s assume they don’t have a car. And they’re probably not taking a flight anywhere, they’re most likely taking a greyhound bus if we’re running this thought experiment in America. How many thousands of dollars do you think they have in furniture? Do you really think it is going to get that person out of any existing debts they have, and then leave them with multiple thousands of dollars to spare? Because if you’ve got $1500 dollars and the hotel room costs $75 a night, you’ve got 20 days to find this cheap apartment and find a job in this city where you know no one before you’re homeless. In reality, you have less time because you’ve got food and transport costs on top of that. Oh and now you’re probably not getting any benefits because you’re in a different town and probably have to go through the system again.
Do you really think this is a good way for someone to turn their life around or do you think that the desperation of their situation means it is far more likely they are going to get exploited by both landlords, employers and possibly criminals in this new town, made all the worse by the fact that they don’t have any contacts and zero support network?
> In fact, [writing] will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own.
- attributed to Socrates by Plato. c.399-347 BCE. “Phaedrus.”
The point is that all technology is a tool. Whether it be writing, calculators, or various narrow AI software. We can either bemoan the loss of a now-less-useful skill (memorization, long division, longform writing), or learn how to use these tools to better achieve our goals.
Technologies develop for different purposes and have different effects. Modern digital technology has a very inhumane origin story, as noted in “New Dark Age” by James Bridle, and other works.
https://jamesbridle.com/books/new-dark-age
What if we had control to cause the sun to go supernova by doing something that everyone on earth has access to, like simply arranging a small pile of pebbles in a rough pattern?
The number hasn't really changed, it's just been measured with increasing precision. It is rather unlikely to be wrong given measurements via various methods are all in agreement. Summaries about these various experiments are available: https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/featured_science/tenye...
Yet these companies aren't the ones actually burning the oil, are they? They merely sell the product which others then burn. How can you hold only them responsible but excuse the parties further downstream?
Because those aren't unrelated: it'd be one thing if they just sold oil, but they're behind campaigns deceiving the public about the true cost of using it and encouraging additional consumption. People today are buying new trucks and SUVs which get worse mileage than the 1980s did in part because there's been this well-funded anti-science propaganda campaign and many efforts to hide the true costs.
Put more succinctly, they deserve blame because they chose lies when confronted with an inconvenient truth.
If oil companies have been campaigning specifically to deceive customers about the potential harms those customers may cause, then that should be what they are "held responsible" for. Trying to make them responsible for harms others caused using their products is rather orthogonal to that, and doesn't bolster arguments criticizing them.
Tangentially, while some vehicles presumably have worse mileage than a comparably-sized vehicle from the 1980s, fuel efficiency has significantly increased since 2005 (after a small decrease from 1985-2005) while supporting continuously increasing power and weight [0]:
In the two decades prior to 2004, technology innovation and market trends generally resulted in increased vehicle power and weight (due to increasing vehicle size and content) while average new vehicle fuel economy steadily decreased and CO2 emissions correspondingly increased. Since model year 2004, the combination of technology innovation and market trends have resulted in average new vehicle fuel economy increasing 32%, horsepower increasing 20%, and weight increasing 4%.
> Tangentially, while some vehicles presumably have worse mileage than a comparably-sized vehicle from the 1980s,
There's a challenge here: people have been encouraged to buy larger vehicles. A small car will have better mileage now but the kind of vehicle the average person is commuting to work in now is much larger than it was three decades ago. I would argue that this is in part due to the successful campaign which fossil fuel companies funded to reverse conservation wins of the late 70s & early 80s. It wasn't just them but they had a significant role in shaping the political and social discourse (e.g. promoting gas guzzling as a macho thing).
Thanks for your civil engagement on what is often a contentious topic.
While not a perfect representation of purchases, I believe the EPA chart (Fig. ES-3) I referred to shows the average of all for-sale models for a given year, so this should capture the increasing preference for larger vehicles. Indeed, the horsepower and curb weight are shown as significant increases, even while fuel efficiency is improving (≥2005). It looks to me like the average fuel efficiency passed the 1985 peak (presumably driven by the 1970s oil crises) around 2007.
Clearly two decades of decreasing efficiency was not ideal, but I posit it may be the 1985-2005 period which you are mostly remembering. Going by the chart there was a fast shift to smaller and 'weaker' cars for highly increased efficiency 1970-1975, after which there was a slow continuous increase of power and weight - first occasioning a slow but relatively small decline in efficiency (compared to the 1970-1975 increase), but then changing to increasing efficiency as that became a more important factor for consumers.
Relatedly, while I am certainly not the target audience for the kind of advertisements that may encourage people to purchase more oil-based products, I cannot recall seeing any automotive advertising that wasn't clearly produced by a specific vehicle manufacturer. It sounds like you are suggesting 2nd and 3rd tier advertising by fuel companies for reversing the 1970-1975 reduction in consumption, but I'm not familiar with that space - I would appreciate it if you could direct me to any resources you have about that.
> I cannot recall seeing any automotive advertising that wasn't clearly produced by a specific vehicle manufacturer.
You're right — what I was thinking about wasn't that the Exxon was running ads saying you should buy an F-350 for your grocery shopping but the more subtle long-term stuff: pouring millions of dollars into funding the people who say climate change is a hoax (meaning fewer people feel guilty about 10mpg), turning that into a litmus test for politicians so the same people in office are also receptive to continuing exemptions from pollution laws, etc. The blame is wider than them I think it's important to separate out unknowing mistakes from deliberate attempts to delay action after you know there's a problem.
There's also an interesting split here: until about a decade ago, the interests of the oil and car companies were perfectly aligned. Now that EVs are popular, however, that's diverging and I'm curious what the political realignment will look like — Ford won't be backing transit or high-density housing but they'd be totally cool running ads about how their latest Mustang can be powered by American wind farms.
You would be right if they didn't lobby against e.g. public transit. As it is right now, especially in the US, many people are forced by circumstance and lobbying to own and maintain a car, and usually it's an ICE car. Acting like they are blameless because millions and millions of people have no choice in the matter is just wildly disingenuous.
You're missing the point. Their impact on the subject is much greater than simply making oil products available. They pushed a narrative that aligned with their self interests at the same time it was detrimental to the world. They did this through various means, including press/media and lobbying. The world of energy production could be very different from what it is today if they didn't act only on their self interest. Actions were taken much later due to their misinformation. In my view, the decision makers should pay heavily for what they did.
