Truly aspirational!

Hope you have a nice week as well!

From what I've seen, the electric cost is actually only a small component, the building, specialized hardware, maintenance and labour make up the majority of the bill for most vertical farming operations.

Further, it's a matter of how much energy density you need within a given volume compared to the available roof surface. Most plants don't need full sun, but you might only be able to supply 2-4 times the roof area as internal grow area (when accounting for efficiency losses and the needs of the plants). You would need to provide the majority of the grow area with LED lights anyway. So it might not be worth the resources/labour costs. Though it might be a good supplemental supply of photons.

The only real use case I can see for vertical farming is providing fresh produce nearer to urban centres, or if there is an acute shortage of land, otherwise passive greenhouses (with supplemental lighting and heating if needed) are generally a better use of resources. Specialized produce is another use case, but it seems that we need a lot more research to make it a viable option at scale.

A question of where the energy comes from is also important, solar panels in a desert/on roof tops is good, but if they replace a farm field it's pointless. Wind, nuclear, hydro are good options.

I'm definitely curious to see how the field grows within the context of China and socialism more broadly. Many of the constraints in current implementations are only important when the only consideration is profit.

Edit: read the article, they have some really interesting use cases in their facility beyond what I could imagine.

Depends on how your local roads/side walks/pathways are maintained. If the snow is cleared, e bikes work just fine, but your range will be hurt a bit. A bad headwind will also mean your range goes down a lot (wind seems worse in the winter where I am, but that could be some sort of confirmation bias). The times I've biked through Blizzard conditions/extreme wind and cold I was very glad to have the e assist on the bike. Those days are rare though, and the primary consideration in my mind is how well things are maintained the rest of the year.

That being said, a path that hasn't been cleared in days is basically unusable for any bike. Maybe a fat-tire bike could work, but I don't have experience with that.

In terms of space, I use my bike all the time so I've made space for it in my apartment.

Maybe is should ask, what type of ebike are you looking to get? There is quite a range of types. Mine is basically just a normal bike with a motor assist.

I really dislike ads, so usually I have them blocked, but not all my devices have it done yet. Usually it's just capital trying to get me to buy things so I just scroll past, but just over the weekend it was scary how quickly ads relating to Iran's retaliatiatory action started popping up with the obvious slant you would expect in the west. There seems to be a concerted effort to start beating war drums... This is not including the horrific ads I've seen coming from Zionists over the last half year with blatantly genocidal language. I even reported those ads and nothing came of it of course.

I guess to sum up: ads can and are used as political tools to shape ideology. Yet another reason to get everyone you know on an ad blocker.

So 6 years to project start. Then just a few more years for completion. All in we are looking to a decade out for project completion +/- a few years.

Meanwhile, in Canada they can't even get a timeline or funding for a single line on the most obvious corridor. And the second most obvious corridor has no timelines, and is only a study of feasibility at this time.

I think more important than co-op organizational structure would be a question of work place democracy. Are the workers given say over how their work is undertaken, do they have power over decisions? Ultimately under capitalism we are limited by the need to make enough profit to reproduce the business. The form that business takes when given those constraints can only be on some level exploitative.

The best you can do as an owner or part owner in the case of coops is to listen to your employees needs and compensate them as much as possible given the constraints of the budget.

The problem, as always, with capitalism is that exploitation goes into overdrive when the goal is to make a profit above the cost of production (including labour inputs) and this there is pressure to keep wages down and force longer hours.

If we had an unbiased look at his employees perspective and the finances, we could judge if he is engaging in profit making, or just earning enough to keep the lights on and to keep product moving. We can only take him at his word at this point.

Are there issues with this format, probably, but in the final analysis, will another pro communism propagandist be beneficial for the cause?

Mine haven't started up yet thankfully, but I expect them to be early this year.

Definitely interesting to see. I'd be curious how this compares to the total wheat trade between the two countries and other trading partners, how that's changing over time, and why it's specifically happening now. Is this due to old agreements being unnecessary due to increased domestic production? Is this due to the global market favouring wheat purchases from other countries? Is there just less demand due to some other reason? There is the throwaway line about China being able to source from others, but no indication of who or why.

Obviously this is just Bloomberg so they're not going to dig into these sorts of things as they only care about the changes in prices for the sake of investors.

It's so nice to read these missives. They are so inspiring and the positive messages feel so genuine. The challenges are acknowledged, but they are not used in a decisive way.

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The Soviet Union saved one of my Great Uncles from a concentration camp. Not quite the same, but I appreciate them none the less.

I genuinely recommend reading the book, it won't take you that long.

Key points I got are:

1. Summary of the US policy toward Russia post USSR up to present

2. There is a history of NATO moving east, and also a history of US weapons testing near the border and backing out of nuclear and arms treaties.

3. Preliminary integration of Ukraine military and economy prior to any admittance into NATO, effectively making them an arm of NATO without formal admission

4. A bunch of other history which contextualizes things. Seriously good extra context if you are not familiar with the history.

5. Ultimately, the US and NATO are far more at fault for the tensions that led to the current crisis.

The image shows data from April.

In may Germany entered Recession: https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/germany-enters-recession-2023-05-25/

While the G7/EU other countries may have mostly technically avoided recession, they have only done so barely so far.

Goodbye Petrodollar, history will not miss you.

It's a ways to go still, but this is a promising sign.