Uber’s market cap is arguably more insane than Tesla’s. There is at least a coherent (ridiculous but possible) story where Tesla dominates electric cars, self driving and batteries, all of which could potentially be profitable. Uber literally has no path to profitability in any business they’re in.
Most drivers are probably barely breaking even if they factor in wear and tear and depreciation on their car. Eventually they figure that out.
I had a delivery job with my own car when I was 22. Also a massive wind gust between two tall buildings downtown swung my door open so hard it bent the hinge, which cost me another $600 to fix. I lasted two weeks until I saw the first paycheck. I got out the Kelly Blue Book and did the math and I was losing money.
We had an Uber driver in Antigua, Guatemala that we decided was the world’s best Uber driver. He had water, gum, chargers. His car was immaculate. Went back exactly a year later, called him up to pick us up at the airport. His car looked like it had aged 10 years. Everything in the interior was worn and falling apart.
Yeah Tesla is ludicrously overvalued but at least they have IP and physical infrastructure which would be hard to instantly replicate. Uber basically just have a brand which nobody cares about.
23C indoors in this heat would be a luxury. It’s 27 to 30C indoors at night here, and I’m dying.
Considering a rain dance today.
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It’s funny how crippling things are for places not set up to cope with it, like how there’s chaos when Atlanta gets 3cm of snow. Everywhere here has air conditioning because obviously (it got over 46C one day last summer) but I knew a guy from Salford who lived in Adelaide for a year and he said he’d never been so cold. Lots of houses here do not have central heating or really any kind of heating. A series of life events have led to me living in a ridiculously large 3 bedroom house by myself. I’m sitting here in my study with a fan heater, the rest of the house is freezing.
We do this also.
My father was a London uni lecturer. I remember during a hot summer walking down the road with him and two of his West African students, listening to their complaints about the London heat and how they couldn’t cope with it., with one of them constantly mopping his brow as he shook his head in disbelief.
“Now we have this notion of east and west,” says Darke. “But back then, it wasn’t like that. There were huge cultural exchanges - and most came from the east to the west. Very little went the other way.”
Masterpiece of geometry … the exquisite interior of Córdoba’s mosque-cathedral. Photograph: Ingo Mehling
Given their prevalence in the great cathedrals of Europe, it is easy to imagine that pointed stone arches and soaring ribbed vaults are Christian in origin. But the former dates back to a seventh-century Islamic shrine in Jerusalem, while the latter began in a 10th-century mosque in Andalucia, Spain. In fact, that first known example of ribbed vaulting is still standing. Visitors to the Cordoba Mezquita can marvel at its multiple arches intersecting in a masterpiece of practical geometry and decorative structure, never needing a repair in its thousand-year existence. The vaulted maqsura – the part of the mosque reserved for the ruling caliph – was designed to cast a sacred glow across the leader. However, the official leaflet will tell you little of the building’s Islamic origin, perhaps because it has been a Catholic church since 1236.
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I’m not sure I get why this is an ‘explosive new book’. It seems to be saying things I was taught decades ago as long established fact in architectural history.
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Maybe it’s explosive to people who don’t know about the influence of Islam on the west, which is probably a large majority of people.
Outside of university settings it’s suppressed due to Islamophobia/MiddleEastphobia?
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“The Secret Islamic Roots of the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba–A Stunning Expose”
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I think it’s just general ignorance. There are well known pointed arches and ribbed vaults all over the place that predate Gothic architecture. It’s not eldritch knowledge, it’s basic calendar work.
https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1293603172842221570
Thread. This stuff is legitimately insane. Regardless of what you think of the point of view presented, and some of it is pretty weird imo, it’s a whole different kettle of fish presenting this in a workplace, which is an inherently coercive environment.
Edit: Regarding the content, I’ll just say that what they are presenting as “white male” culture is in many cases actually just capitalism, and in particular the sort of unfettered, unforgiving capitalism which prevails in America. Sort of grimly amusing that this is being presented in a workplace where you have to agree with what is being presented or risk career retaliation.
lol
Well yeah, to me it seems to fall squarely in the middle of “common knowledge” so I dunno, just speculating.
Even then maybe “suppressed” is too extreme… “not shouted from the rooftops”?
Some racists seem genuinely convinced the dirty a-rabs had no influence on capital W capital C Western Culture.
Actually, the specific claim is a bit weirder:
“Notre-Dame’s architectural design, like all gothic cathedrals in Europe, comes directly from Syria’s Qalb Lozeh fifth-century church,” Darke tweeted on the morning of 16 April, as the dust was still settling in Paris. “Crusaders brought the ‘twin tower flanking the rose window’ concept back to Europe in the 12th century.”
So Notre Dame was culturally appropriating from a Roman Christian church??
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