Indeed the conclusion has no relation to the survey. A 'tradwife' strongly implies full-time-homemaker / stay-at-home mom, so only [1] would ambiguously match the term at best.
- No, Relationship, Travel, creative career, kids.
- Normal job, married, "trad husband"
and I suppose there are others and "Trad" wife would cover "Happily married, kids, ‘no’ job.". I also suppose "Trad" implies a "leave it to Beaver mother " sort of lifestyle, always homemaking watching kids. Not out doing stuff.
Makes a bit more sense than charging by how efficient it is at burning gas. Costs should be skewed so that commercial operators who are causing 99% of the road damage, are paying to fix it; not passenger/commuter vehicles that weigh <10,000lbs.
The problem with that is it becomes a regressive tax that impacts the price of all goods transported by truck and raises the prices of basic necessities.
I think the suggestion I saw that all road maintenance should be paid from the general fund makes the most sense.
This would subsidize truck and private car transport against rail, which is counterproductive if you are trying to lower the long term costs of transport and decrease transport externalities (e.g. fine particle pollution, noise, climate change).
> A 2017 report commissioned by the New Zealand Transport Agency found a wide variation in the best-fitting exponents for a power law on 4T axle loads vs 6T axle loads, depending on the current condition and type of the roading. As a very rough summary of its highly detailed findings: A 9th-power law is most predictive when the road is barely able to withstand the 6T load; and the per-crossing damage is roughly linear to axle-weight when the pavement is able to withstand much higher loads than 6T per axle.
Highways (which this link focuses on) are designed for a heavier load than, say, residential streets.
A mid-size SUV is, what, 1 ton per axle? And a semi is max about 10 tons per axle (I don't know the average). And there are more SUVs on the highway than commercial trucks.
And in any case, there's already a Heavy Vehicle Use Tax which is meant to fund the additional maintenance demands caused by vehicles over 55,000 pounds.
It does seem like if I was China, this would be the perfect time to make a big geopolitical move: EU and Russia tied up with Ukraine and Iran, US & Gulf allies now stuck in a war zone, US showing aging tech with large exposure to new drone warfare.
This seems likely the conflict that forces the US into an immediate course correction in military makeup, or suffer large and expensive mass casualties on the battlefield.
What happened to Battleships after Aircraft Carriers entered the picture, comes to mind.
They don't need to do anything militarily. Just keep up with Belt and Road and being a stable trade partner while the US has a trade war with everyone and started an active war with Iran over nothing, and is threatening allies. Fill the vacuum the US left behind and see what happens when the US wants to put sanctions on China in the future.
That's a fair observation. They do a fair amount of objectively warmongery stuff though. All the force measuring in the south china sea, needless escorts, etc. They do engage in border skirmishes and make claim to Taiwan.
> All the force measuring in the south china sea, needless escorts, etc.
These are totally normal though and it would be more surprising if they weren't carrying out military exercises at all.
> They do engage in border skirmishes and make claim to Taiwan.
Skirmishes seems like an exaggeration. Territory disputes are always quite normal and they haven't come close to an active takeover or invasion in almost 60 years.
To describe anything they're doing as "active warmongering" seems farcical though. Where's the war??
Are there any military exercises which seem normal when you reduce them to metaphors on the individual level?
My point is that China is not the only state carrying out these kinds of exercises. For thirty years now I've been hearing it's going to happen any day, this is the perfect moment, it's inevitable. Meanwhile the US has started multiple wars, and toppled a variety of regimes; France has toppled a regime; the UK and other allies assist in all of this.
But the same countries say China is the warmongerer because the coast guard intercepted some boards at the border.
Ya, China will win by default, why do something stupid like Trump would? Make friends with the world, provide working affordable solutions to the high price of oil. Uhm, it’s like Trump is doing everything for China’s benefit.
Autocrats tend to do stupid things as they become out of touch due to the culture of sycophancy around them. It doesn’t help that Xi is old and doesn’t have infinite time to build his legacy. Did everyone already forget the extreme Covid lockdowns in China?
Is it some sort of well-known fact that Xi has some egotistical need to build some kind of strongman legacy? I’m no expert, but the China that he has built is one of extreme competence and long-term thinking. It’d seem contradictory to compromise that for some flashy but ultimately unhelpful actions.
China still has lots of problems, they are just doing a few key things right in terms of tech tree development, while the USA is basically swimming backwards.
Don't interrupt your enemy when they are busy making mistakes.
Iran is shaping up to be a quagmire worse than Afghanistan or Iraq. Even if Trump pulls back from the brink, the GCC economies are significantly damaged, Iran will extort a massive wergild, and European and Asian economies will suffer another energy shock. China is relatively unscathed.
"any real issue"? Like crippling the world economy? They can extract a tithe on every gallon of oil leaving the Gulf. Without Qatari/Iranian natural gas there is a global energy crunch.
South/Central America has no significant military opponents, most especially none that will consume large quantities of exquisite armaments. It would mostly consume Army resources in COIN, which they are extremely experienced with from Afghanistan.
It's actually mystifying that Trump started the beef with Iran, when he could have just invaded Cuba and had an easy win. The Israeli factor of course, truly America's greatest weakness.
Yes, the downstream effects of the helium shortage are going to be extremely painful. Chip production, MRI machines, welding, many scientific uses. (We can't forget the previous era of US insanity in dumping the helium reserve under the 'party balloon gas' anti-science/anti-facts 1990s Congress.[1])
The world still produces enough fertiliser, but prices will rise significantly. The biggest producers (China, India, USA) also consume most of their supply, and China and India get their methane from elsewhere or from coal. Russia is a leading exporter, so they could easily tighten the screws now, leading to further economic shocks. Big importers will feel a crunch [2] and this will leader to significant crop price increases.[3]
Or not. China just saw two supposedly biggest military superpowers fail to achieve their military objectives. China supplied Iran with tons of most advanced SAM they could muster, and it took Iran over a month to shoot down _one_ 50 year old airframe. Gunning for Taiwan right now could provoke orange one to erase Iran oil infrastructure.
It would be, unless China isn't yet militarily ready.
Also if China's Taiwan plan includes using surrogates like Iran to cause simultaneous trouble, then reducing Iran's capability asynchronously eliminates one US worry during a Taiwan scenario.
They are waiting for the political pendulum to complete its swing. Once the blue resurgence hits, US will be deeply distracted with domestic issues and too broke for adventures. Spring 2027 will be unseasonably hot…
If China has any sense they will be looking at how well Iran and Ukraine is going for the invaders and maybe think twice before they make the same mistake.
Based on what? This reads as pretty standard science journalism to me. She uses em-dashes, but so do I. It's a real punctuation mark with legit uses, and certainly not a 100% LLM marker.
Above ground pipeline seems like it would be difficult to defend, and easy to poke a hole into. I’m guessing a TBM to create an underground pipeline would take decades and billions of $$.
I think you are confusing it with the Thai "Mayuree Naree" [0].
Honestly, it's best to ignore X/Twitter for this conflict. Internet access has been restricted bordering on nonexistent in Iran since the massacres in January, and most countries in the region have also either locked down internet access or don't interact in the English language social media bubble.
The Ukraine War is the last war where OSINT had significant accuracy - most states have cracked down on information dissemination and enhanced OpSec.
reply