Notices by Christopher Mims (mimsical@mastodon.social)

What if there were a way to eliminate China's rare earths leverage over the rest of the world -- which allows it to handicap everything from EV to defense production -- by making a new kind of cheap motor that simply doesn't need those elements?

It's happening.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/these-electric-motors-could-help-break-the-worlds-dependence-on-china-3fa07b0b

Thanks to Steve Jobs and Gorilla Glass, factories in America are now ramping up to make affordable windows, made from panes thinner than a credit card, that can:

* save Americans $25 billion / year

* withstand a 2x4 shot out of a cannon

(gift link)

https://www.wsj.com/business/corning-window-gorilla-glass-4f443b07?st=UPDbcE&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

"Up to 70% of residents between North Carolina and Florida, and a trillion dollars in property, could be impacted by the end of the century with just over three feet of sea rise," thanks to the "hidden threat" of climate change -- rising *groundwater*

via @dogzilla

https://www.wlrn.org/environment/2024-11-27/climate-change-rising-groundwater-study

Tesla has the highest rate of fatal accidents among all car brands, report shows

* Fatal accidents per billion miles driven by all vehicles was 2.8 -- Teslas had a rate of 5.6

* Unclear why the disconnect with high vehicle safety ratings, but issue could be autopilot

https://sherwood.news/business/tesla-has-the-highest-rate-of-fatal-accidents-among-all-car-brands-report/

Today something launched I've worked long and hard on -- a new podcast series for the WSJ.

It's free!

We're asking hard questions of the people who aren't just making the news - they *are* the news.

First up, the Tesla refugee trying to beat Musk at his own game.

https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/tech-news-briefing/bold-names-why-this-tesla-pioneer-says-the-cheap-ev-market-ucks/f5db039b-b775-4aee-8114-89ce5be34c4f

really heartening to see that everyone who was so confident Harris would win is absolutely sure they know why she lost

Please sign my petition to “fall back” one hour every month, so that we all gain an extra hour of sleep every ~4 weeks.

(bonus: full day/night reversal on odd-numbered years)

Here's one Texas voter who has been disenfranchised:

Mom, who lives north of Austin, can't physically go to a polling place, so she requested a ballot by mail weeks ago.

Never got it. Monday she managed to talk to an actual person to ask where it was. They said it hadn't been sent yet.

Today she checked the VoteTexas site and she's been marked as having never requested one in the first place.

Probably the last election she'll be able to vote in, and she's been denied that right.

Cybertruck driver is upset that people are laughing derisively at him; other drivers advise getting an extra-dark tint on the windows or else just shrugging it off:

"I sleep and drive soundly knowing my Cybertruck existing in the world is itself a giant self driving stainless steel middle finger to all the snowflakes and communists out there."

https://www.torquenews.com/11826/i-dont-know-why-women-keep-laughing-me-when-im-out-driving-my-tesla-cybertruck/amp

Electric motors might be on the cusp of a transformation on par with the invention of the lithium ion battery, thanks to the pioneering work of Ben Franklin. (really)

1/🧵

https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/electric-motors-are-about-to-get-a-major-upgrade-thanks-to-benjamin-franklin-e96f339d

Gamers, accessibility nerds, please help me:

I need a video game controller for a person with good fine motor skills but extremely diminished gross motor skills (can't lift arms, etc.) so they can control an iPad and therefore a bunch of accessibility apps on it (including critical communication ones)

should be small-ish

thanks!

It's funny, CEOs like to talk about the (potential) benefits to team communication of in-person work, but they never talk about the (very real) detriments to individual productivity. 🤔

U.S. citizens are far more likely to commit pretty much every type of crime than either legal or undocumented immigrants

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014704117

Redditors have found it, the worst cybertruck wrap

https://www.reddit.com/r/CyberStuck/comments/1f5un8h/i_wish_hulk_would_smash_this/

SEC notifies NFT marketplace, OpenSea, of likely lawsuit

Seems a little like beating a dead horse, no?

https://www.axios.com/2024/08/28/sec-nft-opensea-lawsuit-wells-notice

Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover Is Now the Worst Buyout for Banks Since the Financial Crisis

Loans of around $13 billion have remained ‘hung’ for nearly two years, weighing on banks’ balance sheets

* The resulting write-downs have hobbled the banks’ loan books

* "Twitter isn’t only the biggest hung deal by dollar amount since the 2008 financial crisis but one of the biggest of all time"

(gift link)

https://www.wsj.com/tech/elon-musks-twitter-takeover-is-now-the-worst-buyout-for-banks-since-the-financial-crisis-3f4272cb?st=c98dc9gatf4xozt&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Edith Clarke was the first woman in the U.S. to be an electrical engineer, played an essential role in the build-out of our modern electrical grid, invented a widely-used calculator, graduated MIT in 1919, and designed the turbine system inside the Hoover Dam

We should thank her every time we flip on a light switch

https://spectrum.ieee.org/edith-clarke-modern-power-distribution

I'm a reporter looking to interview freelancers who have seen demand for their work go down -- or shift -- in the wake of ChatGPT and all the AI image generators.

This is for a story about how freelancers, specifically, have seen demand for their labor change as use of AI has spread.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

5/🧵

To sum up, doing a complete modernization of an existing intersection can cost a quarter of a million dollars.

Re-timing existing traffic signals using existing crews, and newly-available data and insights, actually saves cities money, while cutting down pollution.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/google-green-light-traffic-light-optimization-992e4252?st=cnhqh4khkgroesu&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

2/🧵

🚦 A major source of congestion in cities is poorly-timed traffic lights.
(Yes, I know, we should just have fewer cars.)

🚗💨 They're also a *huge* source of lung-killing pollution. It's 29x worse at intersections, because of those stops and starts.
You might say "oh, how foolish, surely there is a 'smart' traffic light option?"

💰 And there is. But it's expensive. Good luck paying for it at all 300,000+ of America's traffic signals, much less the billions worldwide.