> Most energy consumption is for transportation and housing.

Of course it is, if you have offshored energy-intensive industries.

And still others who think he has an difficult personality and set of beliefs, but who greatly respect his achievements.

Surprised they are not using linear opposed piston crankshaftless generators to make an extended range EV aircraft.

Smaller, lighter, simpler, cheaper, and more flexible about fuel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeG4zLlFkak

Linear engine starts around 11:19

My father, a mechanical engineer, was a tireless advocate of the hypocycloid crankshaft mechanism. In the 90s, hybrid vehicles with a hypocycloid-based generator feeding the batteries that make the electric motors go was the application he was going for, especially since hypocycloids function best at constant RPM.

I say this with all sincerity, I love this sentence:

"My father, a mechanical engineer, was a tireless advocate of the hypocycloid crankshaft mechanism."

For some reason just reading that brought a smile to my face.

From mechanical engineers I’ve met it almost seems a requirement that they have something they tireless advocate for.

Yeah. I bet he was.

Turbines are extremely reliable and well-understood in aviation propulsion

This! Anything unproven makes the flight certification process longer. They already have to get their electric side certified, might as well make the backup generator as easily certified as possible.

Good point. Only have one new tech at a time.

Generation II then.

Things can still go wrong locally, for you and yours.

I recommend "Practical Doomsday" by Michal Zalewski. [1] It's useful as a set of topic reviews and checklists if nothing else.

1. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09BKKQN4Y/

Tagline: "What You Really Need Is an AI That Gets Things Done"

Does not have a mechanical arm or any ability to move itself.

Yeah, it is actually a portable AI agent computer, not physical AI.

Fernandez-Villaverde says he goes to each country's national statistical agency's website, and uses their numbers for births and deaths and population, and computes fertility and replacement rate, and the trajectory of population for each country from that.

He says he has no idea where the UN gets its numbers, despite asking several times. He is a professor of economics and demography, so he's not going to just make stuff up.

The tech connection on this is that phones expand the radius of the circle of peers - people that a given person can see and copy. But most of the problem is as Fernandez-Villaverde says: modernity itself, the expansion of money into more and more areas of life.

> The part I'd take elsewhere:

Please, please do not write like an AI.

With all the world's knowledge freely available on the web, people still do this.

Unless it's an April Fool joke, in June.

> it feels… deeply uncomfortable talking to a machine like you would a person.

That's why the form factor should be a wand. Flourish it to activate, and speak your spell.