Regarding saunas; here in northern Sweden there are factories that churn out barrel saunas. I had mine built on top of trailer chassis so that it can be moved down to the lake in summer, and kept closer to the cabin in winter. Saved a lot on shipping too as I could pick it up my self. The cost here is around 4500 USD and upwards for a barrel sauna, depending on quirks and features. Though in order to be a “real man” around here you really have to build the sauna yourself, and the wood industry provides instructions. I ran the most popular one through Google Translate as reference: https://www-byggbeskrivningar-se.translate.goog/invandigt/bastu/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=sv&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Red cedar certainly adds a luxury flavor to the build for a fellow Scandinavian as we don’t have that tree growing here. The North American saunas in general seem to be more luxurious so pricing is hard to compare. Mine is made of Spruce with benches of Aspen. I figured that if it’s good enough for Börje Salming it’s good enough for me, as I got the same model and manufacturer. Not that I’m sure he is known by *every* Canadian, but just had to brag a bit about it :)
Since we have a short term limit on battery materials until mining ramps up, as well as shortage of chargers and since most electricity is still generated from fossil fuels, battery electric vehicles will remain much more expensive and are not a real short term cost effective solution to CO2 emissions. I believe hybrid cars which don’t need charging and require much fewer batteries are a better way to reduce CO2. Assuming average existing cars now get combined 22 MPG and the new Prius gets 57 MPG. A Prius costs about half what an average new Tesla costs and there aren’t many cheap BEVs given the supply constraints . A million cars at 22 MPG driven 10000 miles use 454 million gallons of gas, replacing all with Prius would instead use only 179 million gallons. For the same price you could replace only half with Teslas and still use 227 million gallons from the remaining old cars which were not replaced, plus whatever fossil fuels used to generate the electricity for the Teslas. That plus the tax money wasted on EV subsidies makes hybrid cars a much better solution. Also, no range anxiety or need for new charging infrastructure which is also a big hidden cost. I don’t know of anyone except Toyota that seems to realize this.
I'm very familiar with this argument, and there's plenty of merit to it. People have been making it for 15 years, at least.
A lot depends on how rational we are about how we do things at the larger system level, which includes the grid. If we insist on intermittent renewables and need tons of batteries for the grid, then batteries will be quite scarce.
If we're smarter and go by into nuclear for the grid, it should get much cleaner without all the material needs of RE, and that'll leave more supply for EVs. Scaling up EVs will help drive R&D into new battery chemistries and reduce costs, and as EVs ramp up in the fleet, the grid should get cleaner in parallel, driving a higher benefit over HEVs.
But because we won't optimize for this, there's definitely a big role for HEV and PHEVs. I just think Toyota should also offer BEVs versions. I get 100% of my electricity from hydro here, it would be perfect.
We would argue that Honda has the right idea building hybrids over BEVs. Commodity shortages for batteries make it likely we would get more bang for our buck with hybrids. But they aren't currently politically correct, so there's that.
I had a LinkedIn avatar photo done by a professional photographer. Before being handed the final photo, he already did the teeth-whitening (photo-only! 8-D ), facial-symmetry repair, etc. so my photo already looked like "me, only better". Then I ran it through Matlab, but there are probably Python/Python library functions that can do something similar. Basically, I converted the avatar photo I like best from 256 bit (colors) to a reduced set of colors (had to experiment - I have no set rule for a recommended least set of color bits). Next I superimposed outlines generated by edge detection functions. Voila! It ended up being a fairly accurate "cartoon", but sufficiently anonymized.
So, a fun process (for me anyways) and no AI involved whatsoever.
That's great! What I had in mind is a photo that nobody could know has been altered (except maybe with some forensics tools), but this works too for avatars.
Regarding saunas; here in northern Sweden there are factories that churn out barrel saunas. I had mine built on top of trailer chassis so that it can be moved down to the lake in summer, and kept closer to the cabin in winter. Saved a lot on shipping too as I could pick it up my self. The cost here is around 4500 USD and upwards for a barrel sauna, depending on quirks and features. Though in order to be a “real man” around here you really have to build the sauna yourself, and the wood industry provides instructions. I ran the most popular one through Google Translate as reference: https://www-byggbeskrivningar-se.translate.goog/invandigt/bastu/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=sv&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Thank you, that's great! I love the local flavor :)
I've seen some relatively basic barrel saunas for 4 and 6 people here that are around 9-10k CAD. Like this:
https://www.costco.ca/golden-designs-marstrand-6-person-barrel-steam-sauna.product.4000056203.html
Red cedar certainly adds a luxury flavor to the build for a fellow Scandinavian as we don’t have that tree growing here. The North American saunas in general seem to be more luxurious so pricing is hard to compare. Mine is made of Spruce with benches of Aspen. I figured that if it’s good enough for Börje Salming it’s good enough for me, as I got the same model and manufacturer. Not that I’m sure he is known by *every* Canadian, but just had to brag a bit about it :)
I had to search Börje Salming -- I'm the only Canadian who doesn't watch hockey I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Since we have a short term limit on battery materials until mining ramps up, as well as shortage of chargers and since most electricity is still generated from fossil fuels, battery electric vehicles will remain much more expensive and are not a real short term cost effective solution to CO2 emissions. I believe hybrid cars which don’t need charging and require much fewer batteries are a better way to reduce CO2. Assuming average existing cars now get combined 22 MPG and the new Prius gets 57 MPG. A Prius costs about half what an average new Tesla costs and there aren’t many cheap BEVs given the supply constraints . A million cars at 22 MPG driven 10000 miles use 454 million gallons of gas, replacing all with Prius would instead use only 179 million gallons. For the same price you could replace only half with Teslas and still use 227 million gallons from the remaining old cars which were not replaced, plus whatever fossil fuels used to generate the electricity for the Teslas. That plus the tax money wasted on EV subsidies makes hybrid cars a much better solution. Also, no range anxiety or need for new charging infrastructure which is also a big hidden cost. I don’t know of anyone except Toyota that seems to realize this.
I'm very familiar with this argument, and there's plenty of merit to it. People have been making it for 15 years, at least.
A lot depends on how rational we are about how we do things at the larger system level, which includes the grid. If we insist on intermittent renewables and need tons of batteries for the grid, then batteries will be quite scarce.
If we're smarter and go by into nuclear for the grid, it should get much cleaner without all the material needs of RE, and that'll leave more supply for EVs. Scaling up EVs will help drive R&D into new battery chemistries and reduce costs, and as EVs ramp up in the fleet, the grid should get cleaner in parallel, driving a higher benefit over HEVs.
But because we won't optimize for this, there's definitely a big role for HEV and PHEVs. I just think Toyota should also offer BEVs versions. I get 100% of my electricity from hydro here, it would be perfect.
Clippy that doesn’t suck is the best AI analogy I’ve heard so far
What more can we ask for? haha
We would argue that Honda has the right idea building hybrids over BEVs. Commodity shortages for batteries make it likely we would get more bang for our buck with hybrids. But they aren't currently politically correct, so there's that.
Buzen and I discussed something similar in the thread here:
https://www.libertyrpf.com/p/378-stripe-amazon-rxpass-microsoft/comment/12204266
https://www.libertyrpf.com/p/378-stripe-amazon-rxpass-microsoft/comment/12205028
I had a LinkedIn avatar photo done by a professional photographer. Before being handed the final photo, he already did the teeth-whitening (photo-only! 8-D ), facial-symmetry repair, etc. so my photo already looked like "me, only better". Then I ran it through Matlab, but there are probably Python/Python library functions that can do something similar. Basically, I converted the avatar photo I like best from 256 bit (colors) to a reduced set of colors (had to experiment - I have no set rule for a recommended least set of color bits). Next I superimposed outlines generated by edge detection functions. Voila! It ended up being a fairly accurate "cartoon", but sufficiently anonymized.
So, a fun process (for me anyways) and no AI involved whatsoever.
That's great! What I had in mind is a photo that nobody could know has been altered (except maybe with some forensics tools), but this works too for avatars.
Thanks for the comment! 💚 🥃