USB-C charger made compact thanks to GaN. (or for the car, since the car companies seem to be years behind on USB-C; or a power strip). Everything will charge much faster!
What happens when Disney expands into China? How do the master storytellers of Hollywood tap into 5,000 years of history, art, language, and culture? Answer: you get U.S. Disneyland with a Chinese restaurant and without any obese people on mobility scooters.
A Metro ride will get you in smooth modern comfort from anywhere in the city to Shanghai Disneyland for between 50 cents and $1. There will be a clean restroom in every station through which you travel and the trains run every 2-5 minutes. From the center of Shanghai it is roughly 45 minutes on the Metro to Disney.
Bring your passport. Disneyland has not been briefed on the merits of hosting a large population of the undocumented. Tickets can be purchased in advance or at a ticket booth on site (no line at 10:00 am on a Monday, one hour after opening) at a cost of roughly 50 percent of what you would pay in Florida or California. Lines for rides can be 30-45 minutes so it makes sense to pay roughly double (still no more than the U.S. price) for a “Premier Access” add-on that gives you an anytime fast pass for each big ride.
You can do all of the big rides in one day, but it would probably take two days to explore all of the corners of the and wait in line for the smaller rides for which fast passes are not available (you can pay about $1,000 for the super VIP guide, though, and maybe skip those lines too?). As a strategy, consider saving the Crystal Grotto ride for after dark. It has beautifully lit scenes that might not seem magical during the daytime.
Most of the rides are tame so it is easy to get inured to the dire warnings cautioning the pregnant, the drunk, etc. The TRON roller coaster (ride through), on the other hand, makes you wonder “Why is this legal?” There is a “recovery area” for after the ride.
There is a fun ropes course:
Alice in Wonderland gets a maze (how long before everything related to Lewis Carroll has to be ripped out of U.S. parks?):
I did try the Chinese restaurant for lunch, noting on Facebook “The same boring noodles with crab sauce as at US Disney parks.”
Prices are fairly reasonable, but the most sensible strategy is to have lunch in the adjacent “town” that has a bunch of ordinary restaurants, including a Cheesecake Factory(!), selling Shanghai mall-style food at Shanghai mall-style prices (e.g., about $5 for a bowl of noodles with dumplings or whatever; divide the 35 price below by 7 and remember that it includes tax and service/tip). It is about a 5-minute walk from the park to these restaurants and getting back in is easy with your ticket.
Disney did bring the best of American cuisine to the captive Chinese audience e.g., turkey legs and corn dogs. A water bottle inside the park is about $1.50, but most Chinese bring their own bottles and refill as necessary.
Skip Remy’s Patisserie. Maybe a rat can cook, but he can’t bake.
If you need a souvenir, the castle contains a gift shop with a $260,000 glass replica of the castle..
The parade (video I made for the kids) is off the charts with between 5 and 20 dancers milling around each float and one float per movie. People begin occupying prime spots 30 minutes before it starts, though the Premier Access top level pass should give you a dedicated viewing area. It is helpful to be at least 6′ tall if you’re not going to arrive well before.
Going back to a downtown hotel is as easy as strolling to the Metro station:
Overall: a much better experience than in the U.S. Disney park due to the reduced crowding, a fun activity for an off-peak weekday if you’re in Shanghai, not too much Chinese-specific design.
[Erin] O’Callaghan has accused Schewe, an associate professor of criminology whose research specialty is sexual-assault prevention, of assaulting her in November 2017.
Schewe has vigorously denied that claim, and Title IX investigators exonerated him after concluding that O’Callaghan’s most serious accusation — that Schewe undressed her and started to perform oral sex on her when she was too drunk to consent — could not be substantiated.
Schewe, who is in his early 50s and has worked in the field for more than a quarter-century, regards the implications of the movement differently now that he stands accused.
“I celebrated #MeToo. I thought, ‘Yes! Victims are finally being believed and men are being called out for their shitty behavior. This is fantastic,’” he said in an interview last week with The Chronicle. But the side effect of that, he said, “is that people are now guilty by accusation.”
(“guilty by association” with the drunk woman’s naked body?)
Working from a base of decades of scholarly inquiry, #BelieveWomen turns out to have some subtle exceptions:
He told Title IX investigators that he has devoted his life “to preventing violence against women” and is inclined ”to believe survivors” — even as he dismissed O’Callaghan’s accusations as “something she largely created in her own mind.”
But in his interview with The Chronicle, Schewe said: “If she would have told me that a professor got her drunk and took advantage of her, I would give her support. I would believe her.”
To Schewe, his ordeal is evidence that it’s gone too far. “Maybe it’s a warning to everybody that nobody is safe in the #MeToo era,” Schewe said. And his takeaway? “That guys should stay away from any woman because they have the potential to destroy their life with a couple of words with no consequence to them.”
Life at the University of Illinois can be cozy, at least for those who are not so drunk as to have forgotten most of it:
The lawsuit states that O’Callaghan, who had consumed one or two drinks at Schewe’s apartment [after five or six drinks at a bar], fell asleep on the couch. At some point the rest of the guests went on a late-night food run, leaving O’Callaghan and Schewe alone.
Schewe, intoxicated and “extremely tired,” said he lay down on his bed. He said that O’Callaghan followed him into the bedroom, took off her jeans, and climbed into bed with him.
“Nothing happened, of course,” Schewe told The Chronicle. “Being a sexual-assault-prevention researcher, I knew that there was no safer place that she could be.”
O’Callaghan says in the lawsuit that while she does not recall how she ended up in Schewe’s bed, she remembers that at some point, he “entered the bedroom, laughed, pulled her pants and underwear down, and performed oral sex on her, all without consent.” That’s when O’Callaghan says she blacked out.
Who paid for all of these drinks, you might ask? The taxpayers of Illinois! They’re on the hook to pay lawyers to defend the university from the referenced lawsuit. They’ll also be paying their share of the salaries of judges and other Federal court officials. They’re paying the accused scholar’s salary and benefits while he is “on administrative leave”. They’ll each work a few extra hours in 2020 if there is a fat settlement for the plaintiffs.
(Practical tip in case someone complains about the contents of your PC’s hard drive:
In his statement to the Title IX investigators and his interview with The Chronicle, Schewe dismissed many of the women’s claims outright. No, he did not offer cocaine to Kirkner and Lorenz, nor did he make the remark Lorenz’s partner attributed to him after her dissertation defense. While it’s possible Lorenz saw a nude woman on his desktop-computer screen, such images are common in work on rape prevention and teaching safe sex.
Another practical aspect of this is that the married guy in his early 50s (a “wife” is mentioned) was able to get a woman half his age to share his bed by expressing a passion for some female-oriented issues.)
The good news is that public radio will now have a little more color.
The lawsuit against Schewe, a clinical psychologist who has shared his expertise on rape prevention with such outlets as NPR and Quartz, is one of the more unusual sexual-misconduct cases confronting higher education. Schewe has served as director of the university’s Interdisciplinary Center for Research on Violence, and he recently co-edited the Handbook of Sexual Assault and Sexual Assault Prevention (Springer, 2019).
The 2020 Hyundai Sonata is rolling out of the Alabama factory now (Korean brains and American brawn?).
A candid media presentation shows that “road noise” (unclear what speed) was 63.5 dBA for the new Sonata versus 63 for the Camry and 64 for the Accord. Hyundai has pulled out the same technical stops as Toyota and Honda, i.e., using windshield glass laminated with a sound-absorbing layer of plastic (“acoustic glass”). All but the lowest trim levels also get acoustic glass for the front side windows.
(Car and Driver did a comparison test in which the Sonata was rated 2 out of 5 and objectively measured 1 dBA noisier than the Accord (and 2 dBA noisier than the Camry). The authors noted that “A small tornado’s worth of wind noise makes its way into the cabin, which is surprising because the Sonata is the only car here with dual-pane glass in the front doors.”)
Hyundai is pushing hard with smartphone integration. Their “digital key” (Android-only, perhaps due to Apple restrictions on using near field communication?) lets people open, start, and drive the car without a key. At the SEL trim level and above, the car can be remote-started from an app that works on iPhone or Android.
Now that we live in a USB-C world, of course the car, like every other car, is crammed with USB-A charging ports.
Even the lowest trim level includes Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. It looks like the next step up, SEL, is the minimum for the “Blue Link” remote start, heated seats, automatic temperature control, blind spot assistance, rear cross-traffic assistance, etc. This is priced at $25,500. It is an extra $1,200 to get the digital key and some other goodies via a “convenience” package. It looks as though the comparable Honda Accord is the EX, at $27,770. (But the proper way to compare car costs, I think, is to look at the monthly lease payment since that encapsulates the market’s belief regarding likely resale value. See this example with a Tesla 3.)
Readers: Since the prices are similar, maybe it comes down to looks and style? Here’s the Sonata, the Accord, and the Camry. Which one looks the best?
Thanks to my comments scolding Facebook posters on their failure to fully embrace socialism, LBTQIA+ rainbow flagism, etc., I am on Joe Biden’s email list. From November 16, 2019:
Subject: I never got a million dollar loan from my dad
My father taught me that a job is about more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity. It’s about being able to look your child in the eye and say everything is going to be ok.
Unlike Donald Trump, my father never loaned me millions. Everything I’ve gotten in my life I’ve worked for — and that’s the reality for most Americans.
For Donald Trump, his life was handed to him on a silver platter and he has never had the slightest inclination to pay it forward.
I’m going to lay out the case on Wednesday night at the debate why I’m the best candidate to take on and defeat Donald Trump next November. But I still need to raise another $500,000 from grassroots supporters before I take the stage in order to stay on track with our fundraising. Can you chip in $5 today to help me out today?
Since Donald Trump is now a multi-billionaire with a personal Boeing 757 in executive configuration, saying that he started with only $1 million (subject) or “millions” (body) is tantamount to admitting that the hated dictator (and almost lifelong Democrat!) has been tremendously successful in business, as measured by ROI. Does Biden not realize this or does he assume that readers of his email are not smart enough to recognize that turning $1 million into multiple billions is an unusual outcome?
[Also note the outdated description of a job from this outdated politician: “It’s about being able to look your child in the eye and say everything is going to be ok.” The welfare parent with the lifetime right to occupy public housing can do that. The employee-at-will holder of a non-government job can’t promise a child anything about the family’s future.]
What did I miss while I was in China? Are the geriatrics still leading among the Democrats? Or is Mayor Pete emerging as I predicted?
(Another politician with whom my Facebook postings apparently align is Tom Steyer. As with other Californians, I can’t figure out why he bothers with national politics. If there are services, such as housing for people currently living in tents, that he thinks government should provide, why doesn’t he organize it at the state or local level where Republicans can’t obstruct progress? Has anyone just straight up asked him why he doesn’t bring his religion to 40 million fellow Californians before trying to proselytize the entire nation?)
I hope that we can all agree to give thanks that we’ve moved on from this phase of personal computing!
Separately, with no Thanksgiving to slow them down, China can concentrate fully on Christmas decoration weeks earlier than Americans. “There’s Snow Place Like Shanghai Disney Resort” shirts in a city where November high temps had fallen to around 70 degrees…
Related:
William Shockley, the not-very-woke developer of the modern transistor and founder of Silicon Valley
Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari (see the game console in the photo)
Adam Osborne, the leader of the team that gave us the first mass market portable personal computer
If the Chinese ever start celebrating Thanksgiving (or joining Elizabeth Warren in a National Day of Mourning), the supermarkets are ready. Turkey-flavored Cheetos:
Although the New York Times and CNN bravely spoke truth to power in China by covering the Trump impeachment intensively (not leaving any space in their respective China editions for coverage of unrest in Hong Kong, for example), the stories that they ran assumed that the reader already knew the crimes of which the hated dictator was guilty.
Now that I’m back from China…. what is the status of the Trump impeachment? (now in its fourth year as measured by the time that my Facebook friends first began discussing the process as it applied to Donald Trump)
For voters whose interests Trump represents (i.e., the people who actually did vote for him), has anything been uncovered in this process that would give them a reason to prefer a Democrat as President?
[Separately, some business people in China told me that they thought Trump was pursuing the correct (for Americans) trade policy on China: “The tariffs were long overdue and China had it coming,” one said. They shared the perspective of the European multinational business executives we met on our Northwest Passage cruise, i.e., that China had been maintaining unfair trade barriers and policies for decades.]
“Those fancy tea bags? Microplastics in them are macro offenders” (Guardian) says that excessively rich and/or pretentious people who drink tree from nylon bags are ingesting a lot of plastic (bonus: they’re also trashing the environment by consuming way more in energy and materials than folks who drink tea made from paper tea bags).
One local source for ingestible plastic is Tea Forté. Customers of this high-cost brand have been getting massive doses of plastic, far above what the turbine-powered helicopter moms fear kids might get from eating food cooked in a Teflon pan (example paranoia: “I do like to back up my points with scientific studies, but often it takes many years for a complete and acceptable study to make useful conclusions. With something like Teflon cookware, there are lots of vested interests so it could be a few more decades before valuable health information is known.” (i.e., we can predict Earth’s temperature 100 years from now, but 63 years of history with Teflon pans is not enough to say anything definitive; it is complicated by the fact that companies are getting insanely rich selling $10 pans at Target and using the profits to corrupt academic science)).
Have the drinkers of these fancy plastic-packaged teas done the required experiment for us? Their bodies might be half plastic by now and yet they aren’t dying off at an extraordinary rate.
While I was in China, Tesla introduced its 6-seat Cybertruck. At $40,000 for the 2WD version, it does not seem overpriced (and the 4WD version at $50k with 16″ of ground clearance would have the potential for good off-road performance, right?). Operating cost here in Massachusetts (22 cents/kwh electricity) should be about the same as a gas-powered mid-sized car, maybe 7 cents per mile? Practicality with the locking bed cover (standard?) should be good, except for parking.
There is the image question. With today’s Teslas, one expects the driver to emerge and deliver a lecture on climate change, the merits of Elizabeth Warren, unions (except at Tesla itself), and a larger government, etc. What would the image be of someone who drives what looks like a high school kid’s first SolidWorks project?
How did they pick the name? This is for people who used to say “I’m using the Interweb”?
How are they going to deliver this car at $40-50k profitably? Isn’t stainless steel expensive?
