Sometimes, the Deutsche Bahn is so late, that it's early. Wrapping around. The previous train in the schedule sometimes was so late, that it was just a bit before the next one was supposed to depart. So the next one is cancelled or delayed. I experienced this a few times. But with the cheap Deutschland Ticket, I couldn't really complain at the time. Tho, Arnhem to Hamburg, even 8h late, was not the most enjoyable of experiences (again, Deutchland Ticket, around 2023 IIRC. so no IC trains, which didn't suffer to the same degree).
Why? Bathroom queues or things like that? I live alone but am almost always late. A few weeks ago I was late to the airport for a flight by a couple of hours. Yesterday I was late to work, I was commuting by car when an officer thought of stopping me and do some checks for around 10-15 minutes. It does feel like I'm cursed or something. It happens way too often, but almost always feels as if it's completely outside my control.
For instance (and maybe this is embarrassing ...), I was late to the airport because the day before I went a bit later to bed than planned, so I overslept my alarm a bit, but still had plenty of breathing room. So I proceed, with the car. As it happens, I live in a country, let's say NL, and the airport was in BE. It also happens that fuel is significantly cheaper in BE than in NL (over 25% cheaper at the time). I'm also quite precise about fuel consumption.
As it happens, speed limit in NL is 100km/h during the day, but 130 during the night. I was still well within the high speed section during those very early moments of dawn. But I normally only ride my car during the day. So I know intimately how much fuel I'm using. So I calculate things ,with a lot of safety margins, to optimize fueling costs, by reaching BE with not a lot of fuel. However, as I was a bit underslept. Normally I know exactly how many km I can do after the low fuel indicator comes on. I of course anticipated this would be lower at 130/h rather than 100/h, but somehow, my calculations were a bit off. I ran out of fuel on the highway, well inside BE, but some 2km short of the gas station.
Not the best of times, as you can imagine. I was starting to panic a bit, thinking of eventual costs, I don't know the exact law in BE, if I have to pay someone to tow me, it would cost probably hundreds of time more than the potential savings. But somehow, the place where the car stopped was in a location under a bridge, where I could actually get off the emergency lane, so in a very protected spot. Must have been 5AM at the time, I proceed to walk towards the first exit, grabbing a plastic bottle from the ground. After about 800m i manage to get off the highway, to that first settlement, and not long after, a very nice gentlemen takes me to the gas station. I discovered, stupefied, that the station only sells truck diesel. I walk a few minutes to the next one. Same story. I keep walking until I finally find one selling petrol, and a very nice lady, after explaining her my situation, agrees to take me to my car on the highway, which was 1-2km away. I do pay her for her trouble.
Now, this whole incident only took about an hour, so I'm still sort of on track. But now it's starting to be early morning, and some of the worst traffic jams I've encountered. Basically the trip takes over 90 minutes more than originally estimated. I buy another plane ticket for another plane later that day and still end up not that badly, but ... yeah.
Hence the whole "If you're on time, you're late". Everywhere I go, has a 10-15 minute buffer, just in case of stuff like that. I end up early to 90% of the things I go to, on time to 5% (really "slightly late") and maybe late once every three years. Can't remember the last time I was ever late really, and it does bother me a lot if I am.
I agree but the thing is, how does one decide for the time that it might take for things which are outside of control, by definition, I am not sure of how long it might take.
And also, if we have a very long margin of time, then does the 0.01% you might be late somewhere really justify something like this.
Obviously it depends on the context, but personally, things just happen in life and its hard to take into factor how many things are and are not in my control.
I could in theory. But inside, it often feels that I'm doing everything as early as possible. Just that I'm overwhelmed. I also don't value being on time too much. I was recently late to a date of sorts, 10-15 minutes, which I think is a big reason why she didn't want to continue anything. It's never on purpose. It just happens. If I'm tired, I leave bed as soon as I can, but it's always a cost benefit analysis, always a decision being made. I may decide that those few minutes of extra rest are more valuable than being on time. If it's a person who I think deserves that punctuality from me, then I will go the extra mile of course.
Occasionally things will happen that you can't account for. I agree.
But from my perspective, the added example story was somewhat in your control. You just optimized for the wrong things. Of course this is easier in hindsight too.
Had you not run out of fuel, would you have missed the traffic too?
My fuel tank is always full. I fill it when it gets about 1/2 empty so that I am not caught stranded because I never know what will happen. Sometimes I get fuel even though I can make it, because what if something goes wrong?
Habits die hard. I have seen highways close for hours to days after an accident or snow storm. If you're stuck there is no where to go.
It's likely I would have missed the traffic jams had I not had the fuel incident, since this was 5AM, roads were empty at the time.
And yes, everything is under our control and nothing is. It's a matter of perspective. Everyone prioritizes, since we have limited time. We choose what we do with that time. Just that, some people, sometimes me included, have such a time debt that sucks their time that it spills into their "obligations".
As for optimizing for the wrong things, this is also to some degree outside control. I obviously realize on a rational level why it's "suboptimal", penny-wise and pound foolish. But change requires effort and time. Which are sometimes used up in other more urgent endeavours.
Considering the site we are, treat your effort/time debt as tech debt.
You appear to be past the point where it's beneficial, and should focus on reducing it to improve your life. Granted this is easily stated when I have no real context.
> It happens way too often, but almost always feels as if it's completely outside my control.
Same thing happens to my partner. They're just fundamentally bad at estimating time and constantly do things that maximize their probability of being late.
Your story for example, almost nothing was outside your control.
I think you're mostly right, except maybe a bit misinformed on #1. The younger Khamenei is, according to recent reports, in a very unstable condition, has likely never actually had an input on the leadership of Iran so far, and his future state is uncertain.
So I think there will be another leader elected soon.
> So I think there will be another leader elected soon.
That alone is another clear sign of Iran's ruling regime emerging as the clear victor. Not only there was no regime change but also their primary regional and global antagonists tried their hardest and completely failed to overthrow them.
Moreover, some neighboring countries who were in the US sphere of influence were very quick to fold and remove themselves from the conflict, while others saw their primary economy attacked by Iran and helplessly so.
Forget about Iranian regime's internal opposition. So did the US.
Is there any question on who emerged the clear winner?
1. A power struggle is more likely than an election. Even if an election, it would be a bit Putinesque considering the IRGC has killed 30k protesters this year, that likely included any viable opposition leaders.
2. Only Qatar, and it is speculated because it was one of 3 countries in the region not intimated by the US about the attack, and they aren't very happy about that.
This is mostly true, but I have to push back against the 30k number. That's a number that only the US regime has been touting. HRANA has verified about 7000.
> I think you're mostly right, except maybe a bit misinformed on #1. The younger Khamenei is, according to recent reports, in a very unstable condition, has likely never actually had an input on the leadership of Iran so far, and his future state is uncertain.
> So I think there will be another leader elected soon.
What does that have to do with anything? The USA (my country, sadly) provoked a far smaller nation and was proved incapable of dominance.
Trump will claim victory, but it's not what they thought they'd get.
What the eff do you even mean? I'm not trying to be inquisitive. I'm pointing out a very specific fault. You're trying to reframe my point and you're full of it.
> What does that have to do with anything?
That's not an actual question. That's me saying "wtf are you talking about".
Although the thought of getting an electric car has passed through my mind on a few occasions, I'm not 100% familiar with the intricate technical details. (for some reason, the tax incentives where I live are still in favor of continuing with the small petrol car I have. Taxes are primarily a function of weight in the Netherlands, and anything besides a lightweight Dacia Spring would imply significantly higher monthly expenditure for me).
What I'm wondering w.r.t. this article is: wouldn't such fast charging shorten the battery lifespan?
I have experience with ebike batteries. Bosch in particular, with very decent 29E samsung cells, that after 70k km or so, basically halved their capacity. I imagine this effect is severily reduced with a car battery because there are a lot more than 10p, so all the wear is distributed more evenly, and 29E are very old technology.
Research on the current EVs shows that they degrade by on average 2.3 % of original capacity a year, but there is a strong dependency on how much the vehicle is used and how often it is DC fast charged, i.e. there is time based degradation and usage based degradation.
Low use vehicles have degradation of 1.5 % a year, heavily used vehicles mostly slow charged had degradation of 2.2 % a year and heavily used vehicles mostly fast charged had highest degradation of 3 % a year.
Now before you think that means the capacity will halve in X years (33, 23 and 17), the article also notes that the degradation is not linear and it was faster in new vehicles and then slowed down - with no way to know if it will slow down further or continue in this manner, etc, until we have a sufficient sample of 20 years old modern EVs.
> the article also notes that the degradation is not linear
Battery degradation is affected by multiple processes which respond primarily to different factors, such as heat, cycles or just time.
This[1] paper goes into some detail about that, and also notes that the typical way batteries were evaluated for longevity in the lab significantly overestimates the degradation compared to batteries used with real-world dynamic loads.
Some quotes:
We found that dynamic cycling enhances battery lifetime by up to 38%. Moreover, we determined the window for the tip-over C-rate that balances time-induced ageing and cycling ageing for this commercially relevant chemistry to be approximately between 0.3C and 0.5C, in the range of realistic average C-rates.
Figure 4a,b illustrates that the degradation is initially dominated by the loss of lithium inventory (QLi). [...] However, as the batteries age, additional degradation mechanisms become important. On the one hand, the positive electrode capacity loss dominates and is impacted by the rest fraction at high SOC [...]
On the other hand, the negative electrode capacity loss (which is less than the positive electrode capacity loss) is impacted by the DoD [...]
Figure 4d shows that, in particular at low average C-rates, when the DoD is beyond 85%, the negative electrode capacity degrades more rapidly, while cells avoiding deep discharge have more preserved negative electrode capacities, in agreement with Fig. 3e. In addition, the DoD has no impact on the positive electrode capacity (Fig. 4e).
I picked 20 years arbitrarily, what I meant is that we don't have data on how modern EV batteries will look when 20 years old, because they have not been around that long.
The whole LFP chemistry is pretty new, on automotive timescales, and lot of the older data on degradation comes from the first few generations of Nissan Leaf, which did not have battery heating and cooling.
Rule of thumb for modern EVs is to not care about the battery at all. They are expected to last longer than the car. I would doubt even faster charging significantly changes this, or if it does it’s worth the trade off to those who need it.
Which is why I commented — because there was a blind spot to their point.
I interpret “modern EV” as an EV in the 2010+ era (as opposed to the original EVs from the 1880s-1910s, which were not modern) which were made for streets / commuting (as opposed to golf carts / theme park cars, which have been around for many decades). And I don’t think I’m alone when using this framing.
2. Old leaf batteries are popular with the modding community. I have friends who who’ve done ICE to EV car conversions using old leaf batteries that still work fine.
I believe you meant to write “10S” instead of 10p. I’m not 100% sure, but you were talking about e-bike batteries, which are often 36V, made out of 10 cells (or banks of cells) in series. The nominal voltage of most lithium chemistries is 3.6-3.7V.
EV batteries have many more cells in series, for example my car is 104S, and 800V cars have (obviously) more than 200 cells in series.
And the longevity of car batteries isn’t about wear being distributed “evenly” (a healthy battery can’t really wear “unevenly”, you always load all cells at once). EVs take care of their batteries, they cool them, heat them, balance them periodically, and they don’t actually pull that much power from them. They also keep the cells within pretty conservative voltage limits.
Indeed, I meant 10S. And what I meant by load being distributed along more cells, is that since you have many more cells, current drawn from each is lower. Which greatly prolongs the lifetime.
And hence the question I had with charging too fast. Since discharging faster clearly wears them more quickly, surely charging faster has a similar effect, since it's mostly the reversed process? A question probably easily answered with a query to a LLM.
“Number of cells” doesn’t really tell you anything about current and how it will affect the battery. The number of cells in series gives you the nominal voltage of the entire battery, and the P number (number of cells in parallel) rarely tells you anything useful — three 2000 mAh cells in parallel are equivalent to one 6000 mah cell, and both approaches are valid and used.
What you care about is actually the mass of the cells, basically the total weight of the active material. More material means higher capacity and can withstand more current.
For example, my car is 104S and that’s it, no parallel connections, but the individual cells are huge (~170 Ah each).
That's strange (i.e. different from my experience). I've been living in the Netherlands since 2021, speak some (~ B1) Dutch, but good English and German. Dutch language was from day one comprehensible due to German similarity. Many/most words either sound like the German equivalent to the point where you naturally match them in your thought, or they are written (mostly) like the German equivalent.
The connection between Dutch and English languages is far more minimal in comparison. In fact, when I first faced the language, I would have said it was a combination of ~80% German, 10% English, 5% French, +5% Others.
Written Dutch is fairly easy for me, on the basis of English + native Norwegian + German from school. Spoken Dutch is largely unintelligible for me, on the other hand, unless they speak very slowly.
> In fact, when I first faced the language, I would have said it was a combination of ~80% German, 10% English, 5% French, +5% Others.
But the vocabulary of English itself is majority of Germanic origin. So while Dutch is often closer to the modern German, there's definitely far more than 10% that has a common origin with English as well as German.
I'd say just stick that $100k in a diversified all-world ETF, because putting it into some random's entrepreneur wannabe is unlikely to pay off (you'll probably not get anything back). Unless you're really wealthy, but then, isn't it better to just donate it to causes you care about?
If investment is what you're after, this approach doesn't seem likely to offer a good risk/return tradeoff.
I do have some things I'd want to start myself, some in those categories, but I'm more lacking time and energy than money. And a bit stuck by life problems?
Not being rich per se, but probably stress. The body has no innate knowledge of how wealthy you are, outside of some information stored in the neocortex about financial details (which has little influence on the overall functioning and regulation of the organism as a whole). But it does keep track of a very important signal, and that is neuroception, or safety, absence of threats. And being wealthy, absence of sources of stress, or ability to avoid them, brings about that state of feeling secure, safe, which affects every cell of the body and leads to a good regulation of the whole organism.
Your body does keep track of your place in the social hierarchy with hormones like Vasopressin, Oxytocin, Testosterone and Estrogen. Social hierarchies are biology not culture. You can tell it's biology because all social animals have social hierarchies.
However, this is a very complicated and poorly understood field. Current research struggles with a chicken and egg problem. Does high testosterone cause high status, or do high status men produce more testosterone? The answer seems to be both simultaneously.
Your scientific study does not support your claim (body keeps track of social status) and the other is a men's health magazine article. Hardly the cutting edge of science
Not when installed properly, i.e. on a level, compacted base. Where I live, in the Netherlands, a great portion of streets, driveways, sidewalks, bikepaths are from klinkers, or bricks. Very rarely do you see any indentations in them (mostly when there was some roadwork and a part of them removed and then reinstalled. The whole reinstalled section sinks a bit, probably because there workers were not careful and did not compact the substrate to the same degree).
Some of these klinker roads see heavy traffic and they're perfectly fine. It's also nice to see the automated machines they have for laying them.
Same here. Living in the Netherlands, I drive a 2008 Daihatsu Cuore, bought for 850E over a year ago, I pay 17E /month in mrb (road tax) and 38E/month insurance. It's basically close to the costs of a scooter. And I average under 4L/100km fuel usage, for my 200km/week commute. I did some calculation and no car comes close to these running costs. Definitely no electric cars, even if I were to get them for free, because road tax here is mainly a factor of weight.
Even a Dacia Spring with its 900kg is slightly more expensive overall to run (in my circumstances. I could charge at home, but don't have solar panels atm), and a lot more expensive up front to buy (used).
It has over 304k km already, and it runs perfectly well with some occasional maintenance and some mechanical sympathy, but I was considering alternatives in case something were to happen. Conclusion? Just buy another one. Suzuki Celerio is the only one in the same ballpark, but it's about 2k EUR more expensive. And I love my Daihatsu.
It wouldn’t change your equation much, but you don’t need a car charger as such, just connect to a normal power socket (which may not be available within reach).
We ran a Leaf for years like that, and it would charge overnight just fine.
We do have a charger now and it’s quicker, but it’s a luxury we didn’t need.
>. Living in the Netherlands, I drive a 2008 Daihatsu Cuore, bought for 850E over a year ago, I pay 17E /month in mrb (road tax) and 38E/month insurance.
Imagine how many people are reading this and thinking to themselves "government has to do something to drive up those numbers so it's no longer financially sensible for you to drive that car"
Well, fuel here is close to if not the most expensive in EU. That also contains a lot of tax. But I just don't drive that much.
And the insurance is cheap because of years of no incidents, and the fact that I'm over 30. But indeed, I wouldn't disagree if the government made electric cars cheaper from a tax perspective. They just reduced the tax discount to 25%, and it will be gone completely in a few years.
If they raise taxes significantly for me, I'll just sell the car and find a closer job. 20km one way to Amsterdam with an ebike, that's 2 hours per day. I don't have that much time to give away at this point in life.
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