Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Sweden cleared the final hurdle earlier this week with the vote in Hungary and will officially join NATO shortly.  Huge upgrade for the alliance.  As with Finland, there's not much love loss between Sweden and Russia.

yeah, not really. Just means US is on the hook financially for even more than they already contribute to NATO and are now responsible for the security of yet another Eurotrash freeloading country that brings nothing to the table. We don't need any military personnel or equipment from any of the pathetic militaries in Europe. We could beat the ever loving shit out of every other country in NATO in a war if all 28 or 29 of them or whatever the hell that number is now ganged up and tried to fight us. We'd smoke dat ass.

Like to see this countries defense resources focus on China and Mexican cartels if I'm being honest. China is the only real peer competitor in the world with the US. They want to supplant us as the worlds superpower- it's a stated goal of that regime- they aren't shy about it. And as far as the cartels go, the fentanyl crisis is real. I'm sure everyone here knows people who have died or addicted. I believe the opioid death toll is about 100k per year in the US now. Most of it from street opioids, most of which come from Mexico. Mexico is completely corrupt on levels that are astounding and that countries ineptitude is affecting our country and we share a large border with them. If they won't smash and destroy the cartels, US should go do it for them.

Right.  So why are you getting all spun up about it?

You, more than any other poster I've encountered on any other message board I've ever frequented, going back to my BBS days in the 80s, seem to constantly be looking for something to be angry about. 

Approaching things like that would absolutely wear me out, but you have to do you, as they say.

At a point, I have to marvel at not only constantly finding things, but being white hot angry at them. It’s not just your everyday anger, but there’s usually some real rageful tone behind it.

I find it astounding that Apple is as much a "lifestyle brand" as it is an electronics company. People with iPhone/iPad/MacBook/Airpods think they're cooler than those "nerds" who buy Android / PC.

You know who is most proud to let everyone else know which electronics they buy? "Nerds".

I’m reminded of a coffee place in my hometown. As Starbucks was building its hegemony, people would proudly say they drank at the local chain instead of the corporate place.

At some point I learned Starbucks had bought the local chain. Later in life, I learned that purchase happened before I was born.

(I will say, I think there’s a sort of yin/yang there, as people who principally don’t buy apple will also let you know and let you know why. And alas the reason are often on the nerdy side. Anyway, I will say, Apple made enough of their products stupid-proof, and that turned out to be a good approach FWIW)

The key thing that is missing is that while battery capacity has increased incrementally the price has dropped by a good amount every year. The last figure I saw a few years ago is that the price has dropped 10% every year since 2013.

Even if the capacity never goes up 10% with current technology, battery powered cars will get cheaper and cheaper until they are on par with ICE and then fall below it.

Past performance is not indicative of future results.

I would have to understand why pricing has been on that trend. I have some theories, but I'm not close enough to that market to know.

What I do know is this:

Prices can never, long term, decline faster than production costs. 

So pricing essentially will be based on the following, long term: cost of inputs + manufacturing/distribution costs + profit.

But there are other things which affect this. There's something known as Wright's Law
Wright's Law which basically states that as volumes increase, costs decrease. This is due to a lot of things, but battery production volumes have increased SIGNIFICANTLY over the last decade. Wright's law may suggest that operational efficiencies, supply chain efficiencies, fixed costs amortization across larger volumes, etc all improved to reach that 10% annual reduction. There could of course be reductions due to technology improvements allowing use of less costly anode metals or other aspects that brought it down as well. 

However I would argue that Wright's Law reaches a steady-state or point of diminishing returns once volumes reach certain points, because at some point you've teased out the operational efficiencies and it just comes down to cost of inputs. So at some point battery cost declines might slow if they were driven by things like Wright's Law more than they were driven by inherent improvements in battery chemistry (i.e. storage capacity gains). 

Which is a long way of saying that I'm not sure we can predict a solid 10% annual price decline for the next decade just because we saw it in the last decade. The market was going through a rapid volume increase and market maturation period, and eventually all of the low hanging fruit will already be picked. 

I'm not a Mitch fan at all, but I tend to view them as 'all the same', whoever replaces him won't make much if any real difference.

McConnell to step down as Senate GOP leader | The Hill

McConnell’s retirement from leadership sets the stage for an intense competition to replace him, with Thune, Cornyn and Senate Republican Conference Chair John Barrasso (Wyo.) expected to vie for the top job.

I'm not a Mitch fan at all, but I tend to view them as 'all the same', whoever replaces him won't make much if any real difference.

McConnell to step down as Senate GOP leader | The Hill

McConnell’s retirement from leadership sets the stage for an intense competition to replace him, with Thune, Cornyn and Senate Republican Conference Chair John Barrasso (Wyo.) expected to vie for the top job.

Tim Scott would be my choice. Backups would be Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz.

Or Steve Garvey.

Yeah, I've finally found something that I both like and that I'll actually do. And I don't want to end up like my parents. I want to still be capable and active in my future years.

I absolutely hate running. I don't do it.

So I do a core strength class every day (typically anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes), ride the Peloton bike 4-5x per week (ranging 30m to 120m, my average class is a little over 40 minutes), and try to do dumbbell strength classes 4+ times per week (either 20 or 30 minutes) per class.

I hate running too. Elliptical is good for my hips and gets the blood moving. We have a nice fitness center in our development. It's 800/year and classes are all free. I do the functional stretch classes now.