At first I thought it was about robots replacing us.
Work peak and professional decline (2019)
91–100 of 164 posts
Re: Work peak and professional decline (2019)
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
And when compared to air travel and hotel stays (which come with large water and heat costs associated with daily laundry) it's actually less of a carbon footprint.
The average room takes 2 loads of laundry, which would be in the neighborhood of 10kw of electricity. 1 gallon of gas represents the same energy (ignoring losses) as 33kw. The average 2017 car in the US got 25mpg. So with a 15+mpg difference, you'd need to either drive 5 miles or less per day (0.3g difference), OR average 100 miles per day and have the hotels wash the laundry 20x as much.
Are you not including the air travel component of the travel (which often results in the passenger choosing to travel much farther than a typical RV trip)?
Re: Work peak and professional decline (2019)
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
> low-efficiency vehicles Tangent: Are these actually low efficiency? Sure, 10 mpg (this is a more typical average, BTW, not 8 mpg) is terrible gas mileage ... for an average car. But a portable house that can drive down the interstate isn't just a car. Per pound, it doesn't seem that bad.
Why hasn't EV tech hit the RV world? How many batteries could one of those Greyhound bus size RV's, or smaller ones, hold? Maybe it has and I'm ignorant. I get that corporate shipping industries would benefit but a lot of delivery vans are the same platform as an RV. I think a Ford F350 is the size of those 25 ft uhaul rentals - about same size as a decent sized RV. RV's typically park somewhere for days, campgrounds…
At a guess, at least two parts apply, though broadly I do think it's a pretty promising option:
1) EV has been very expensive until relatively recently + RVs are a relatively low volume market => slow to re-design all vehicles. Yes, they re-design the stuff on top fairly often, but not AFAIK the chassis itself. I'd definitely be interested if I'm wrong about this though, rapid chassis evolution would probably be interesting to read about.
2) RVs are often used for long-distance and far-from-Civilization™ trips, which very much does not fit well with the (lack of) charging infrastructure. And even when you do go along highways, the charging time (due to higher power use + storage) is going to be substantially longer than on cars, which are already quite lengthy.
re 2: Driving to somewhere with RV hookups would mitigate that a lot, which honestly would cover the vast majority of how many RVers I know use their vehicles. Charging overnight or longer is probably fine... but campgrounds will definitely not like you (and a bunch of other RVs) drawing that much power, they're simply not wired for enormous load. It'll take time for that stuff to be rebuilt.
Re: Work peak and professional decline (2019)
#94There's no real data behind this article. It's basically ageism fueled by self-doubt.
"The Atlantic" has seriously fallen off over the past few years. I've been a regular subscriber for two decades now. I've have always enjoyed it as a source of articles from a fairly liberal perspective, yet nevertheless prone to serious introspection and regular challenges to that perspective.
In the Age of Trump, however, it really has just descended into blog-caliber clickbait. The effort at introspection and critical thinking skills just isn't there anymore. Today, the publication just feels like a collection of opinion essays aimed at pandering to Twitter culture.
This month's cover story is titled "Private Schools Are Indefensible" (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/private...). The author starts off recalling anecdotes about her experience, teaching the children of hedge fund managers at an elite private school catering to the ultra-wealthy.
In the old Atlantic, you would skim through this sort of thing, waiting for the "meat" of the article to begin. References to hard data, facts and figures. Comparisons and contrasts between these ultra-wealthy private coastal schools, and the mundane private schools accessible to middle-class families in cities and towns across the nation. Perhaps even some interesting counterpoint, about minority families being more likely to choose charter or private school when having the option.
In today's Atlantic, though, you never get to that "meat". The introductory anecdotes simply ARE the article! The author hated teaching the children of multi-millionaires at her elite private school, and thought the school was terrible and twelve kinds of racist accordingly. There is zero effort to tie her experience at this school into the broad "Private Schools Are Indefensible" title. Because if you're in the in target audience these days, then surely you already feel that way, and simply want some fluffy opinion content to reinforce your feeling. Right?
I've held on longer than I probably should have, but I don't believe that I'll be renewing with my current subscription expires next year. Which is terribly depressing to me.
Re: Work peak and professional decline (2019)
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
> low-efficiency vehicles Tangent: Are these actually low efficiency? Sure, 10 mpg (this is a more typical average, BTW, not 8 mpg) is terrible gas mileage ... for an average car. But a portable house that can drive down the interstate isn't just a car. Per pound, it doesn't seem that bad.
Why hasn't EV tech hit the RV world? How many batteries could one of those Greyhound bus size RV's, or smaller ones, hold? Maybe it has and I'm ignorant. I get that corporate shipping industries would benefit but a lot of delivery vans are the same platform as an RV. I think a Ford F350 is the size of those 25 ft uhaul rentals - about same size as a decent sized RV. RV's typically park somewhere for days, campgrounds…
The average RV puts on around 5000 miles a year, so I don't think the cost benefit equation works out in favor of electrification.
The travel patterns of many RV'ers means they need big (and expensive) batteries -- drive 200 miles, then spend days or weeks in one place, but since they are driving at highway speeds in a non-aerodynamic vehicle they burn a lot of energy just pushing through the air and don't get to recoup much in regenerative braking like a delivery truck might.
Even though many campgrounds are wired for 50A service, they may struggle when they have 100 RV's all trying to charge at the same time at that rate.
Re: Work peak and professional decline (2019)
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
> low-efficiency vehicles Tangent: Are these actually low efficiency? Sure, 10 mpg (this is a more typical average, BTW, not 8 mpg) is terrible gas mileage ... for an average car. But a portable house that can drive down the interstate isn't just a car. Per pound, it doesn't seem that bad.
The greenhouse effect doesn’t care about why the CO2 was made. A portable house and essentials weighing probably 5kg can go on your back.
This answer seems designed to either insult, denigrate, or cause offense. It’s not a substantive contribution to the conversation.
Re: Work peak and professional decline (2019)
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why hasn't EV tech hit the RV world? How many batteries could one of those Greyhound bus size RV's, or smaller ones, hold? Maybe it has and I'm ignorant. I get that corporate shipping industries would benefit but a lot of delivery vans are the same platform as an RV. I think a Ford F350 is the size of those 25 ft uhaul rentals - about same size as a decent sized RV. RV's typically park somewhere for days, campgrounds…
I don’t know if there is a technical reason why EV hasn’t come to RVs, but having worked with some RV makers they are basically tiny luxury product makers compared to one of the biggest industries on the planet so probably like 1% of the R&D goes into RVs per inch compared to cars.
Most RV makers buy an off-the-shelf chassis from Ford or Freightliner, so they can benefit from truck based electrification work.
Re: Work peak and professional decline (2019)
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
And when compared to air travel and hotel stays (which come with large water and heat costs associated with daily laundry) it's actually less of a carbon footprint.
People don't stay in hotels getting daily laundry for months at a time
People absolutely do this.
Some people literally live in hotels.
Re: Work peak and professional decline (2019)
#99This is a classic MBA-style fluff piece.
Yeah its pretty much a privileged boomer concern to fear professional decline and loss of relevance when most millenials I know (with advanced/professional degrees) have had to fight just to keep jobs, much less ever had to worry about being relevant.
Re: Work peak and professional decline (2019)
#100Related: The notion of "retirement" is a relatively recent invention. Traditionally, when you were too old to work the farm or prove the theorem (sorry, cognitive decline is a well-documented thing, and tends to coincide with physical decline[1]), you would "retire" to a productive life in less-demanding pursuits: caretaking of the grandkids, woodworking, food preservation, writing, etc. It's important to maintain ho…
Does one ever get too old for programming?
I suspect I will be doing this until the day I die. Hopefully in my old age I can work on things I want to though.