Frankly it's how they insist themselves onto their potential users. When I toyed around with Edge a year or two ago, just to get the t-shirt, it was impossible to set a custom home page for first-open instead of MSN crap. New tabs could be customized, but not the initial page. Apparently they fixed it since, but I still don't see Edge as a serious browser, just another rent seeking marketing tool.
Who ultimately pays the tariffs is missing the forest for the trees, their primary function is to tax, and taxation virtually always reduces spending. Don't want to pay tariffs? Buy domestic. Tariffs are the single reason (or one of very few) that the US isn't flooded with BYD electric cars from China. China's dirt cheap labor could decimate the US auto industry, but for tariffs and trade regulation, but I repeat myself.
That’s an incredibly naive position that assumes there are domestic options available for most things, and that they would be cheaper than tariffed items.
> the US isn't flooded with BYD electric cars from China. China's dirt cheap labor could decimate the US auto industry,
What you're describing is called "dumping", and it's a strategy China has used to varying degrees of success in other markets in order to destabilize foreign industries. It could be seen as an act of war.
Chinese labor is not actually so cheap anymore, many other developing nations are significantly less expensive. But China's secret weapon is total control and coordination across industries. They use this to subsidize target industries for the export market. You've highlighted automakers, but they also target steel, aluminum, and others. To a casual observer it almost appears as if they were targeting industries that could be readily adapted to wartime production.
There's a strange pattern of die hard obstinence, even in the face of basic and common facts that we as as society until fairly recently all agreed upon. The reason is that works, if you admit fault/guilt then the usual consequences follow. If they remain obstinate, there's a chance they can project their crime on someone else which doesn't really work except it does retain for them a certain level of public support, from those who "see" what they want to see.
I think there's a real deficit in research on and understanding motivated cognition, and a lot of blurriness about attitudes versus belief versus perception. I don't just mean anything political, I mean things including physical pain and all sorts of things. When someone states something, it's very difficult to distinguish between "this is honestly what I saw or felt" versus "this is what I wanted to see or feel". When you get into the fact that consensus can be wrong, it leads to all sorts of issues.
It would be nice to have some kind of way to discriminate at what point in the percept -> attitude -> construal chain (which is probably more of a feedback loop) we are.
Before getting to research, I think a more honest attitude towards admitting motivated cognition in oneself and others is appropriate. I may give a spur-of-the-moment remark on a political situation, but at least if someone presses me, I will readily provide more insight on my biases and values. When I take the time to contemplate, I usually try to modify my eventual response to avoid undue bias altogether. Being reminded that motivated cognition is pervasive in all of us should reduce the unintentional-but-convenient faults in our cognition.
One side is understandably on edge but nothing DOGE has been doing is unexpected, except in the sense that it's actually happening or seems to be happening. It went through the whole political process's standard change control mechanism, in other words the current Administration literally campaigned on it and received a mandate via both the EC and popular vote.
In the last couple years I've had to overhaul my diet due to sudden onset of all kinds of food allergies since COVID. I used to be chronically tired especially in the afternoons. I now eat very little sugar and no corn syrup/HFCS at all and I've made two interesting observations: My cravings for sweets are virtually zero and my energy levels are stable all day.
There are exceptions but for the most part I'm almost never tired during the day anymore unless I worked out a lot. My energy isn't exactly bouncing me off any walls but it's a noticable improvement.
Those are still quite livable wages, I'm not seeing tremendous wealth but I'm not seeing any exploitation either. I imagine in fifty years some people will be getting paid minimum wage accomplishing basically the same output that a masters degree + 250k+ salary is pulling in now, it all depends on the technology in the tools.
<ConspiracyTheory>
Intel is blocking undervolting because, even though it can improve temperatures and increase clock speeds, it can cause the ME and other black box "features" to stop functioning. Someone doesn't want that.
</ConspiracyTheory>
I'll take one idiotic state senator's public bill that'll never pass over hundreds of government employees colluding with big tech in the shadows to ban speech.
America is an extremely peaceful place for many millions of families. There are thousands of smaller communities throughout the vast country where crime is background noise and kids can and do run around outside if they want, even today.
Some places are running untested, never before seen dev code in production trying to improve the justice system, and they virtually always make things much worse, like California is doing and certain metros around the country.
