theaudientvoid

[theaudientvoid]

What Do US Vehicle Regulators Have Against Tiny Cars?

Super-small urban vehicles have found a place in European and Asian cities. But in the US, federal and state rulemakers seem determined to keep minicars at bay.

it bears repeating that the cars Americans drive are the product of a very strict regulatory regime, there has not been a free market for road vehicles in our lifetimes.

[theaudientvoid]

A few days ago, there was a thread on my dash to the effect of "why isn't the stock market completely fucked, as opposed to only sort of fucked" in relation to recent developments regarding tariffs. The consensus answer was that markets generally seem to think that Trump will back down and this will all blow over.

It's interesting. Paul Krugman recently had a guest on his podcast who made the case that we actually came very close to a full on financial crisis after tariffmageddon.

As a refresher of the timeline, Trump announced very high tariffs, much higher than the markets had been expecting, on April 2, to take effect a few days later. The stock market immediately crashed, but Trump insisted that he would stay the course. Then, a few days later, the tariffs took effect, the bond market crashed, and the Trump almost immediately announced a 90 day pause on some of the tariffs (but an increase on others). Both stock and bond markets have rebounded somewhat since then, but are still down from their highs in February.

The bond market crashing has two effects. First, the sale price of US Treasury bonds falls, and additionally the interest rates that the government has to pay on those bonds goes up. Traditionally, US Treasury bonds are seen as just about the safest financial asset available. This is because the US government its two and a half centuries of existence, has never defaulted on its debt. Because of this, the USG pays very low interest rates on its debt. If the interest rates that the government is required to pay go up, then that has major implications for the governments budget going forward.

However, more germane to the point currently being discussed, a lot of very big banks currently have a lot of their assets in treasury bonds. This is due to regulations put in place after the 2008 financial crisis requiring them to keep a large portion of their asset sheets in "safe" assets, which in practice means treasuries. If these assets were suddenly fall in value, then that would negatively impact their viability as financial institutions.

You make recall the failure of Silicon Valley Bank a few years ago. That was directly caused by fluctuations in the bond market. Now, Silicon Valley Bank had almost all of its assets in treasury bonds, and thus was unusually exposed to interest rate risk. But the crash in the bond market in early April was a lot bigger than in 2023.

[theaudientvoid]

Let’s be seahorses with mama

[theaudientvoid]

one thing i immediately fell in love with about madoka is how sort of uncanny the world looks. the top of the school is bright white and looks like a church. its weird and that weirdness is everywhere and i love it. it adds to the creepiness of everything happening

[theaudientvoid]

💉 doctor davis is here to see you!

[theaudientvoid]

to me willow rosenberg is the epitome of a character who's used to thinking of herself as kind and good because she's always been percieved that way by other people, but when other people say "kind and good" what they really mean is "competent yet unassertive." which isn't really a moral value, it's just the kind of personality that makes authority figures like you. so she's in the precarious position of believing herself to be a Good Person while having never really felt the need to develop a moral backbone. and this is of course the main reason why she's a little fucked up sometimes. i love this about her, to be clear.

[theaudientvoid]

[theaudientvoid]

Yay, new Greg Rucka DC book! Complete with a return of his more monstrous Cheetah!

[theaudientvoid]

[theaudientvoid]

[theaudientvoid]

[theaudientvoid]

Any time people give Madoka shit about the fact that she almost sold her soul for a cake, I like to remind them that there’s a book called Ash by Malinda Lo in which the main character literally sells her soul to a faerie in order to go see her girlfriend at a dance, and then doesn’t even dance with her.

[theaudientvoid]

can confirm this is exactly what driving in SF is like.

you've got to be fucking with me. this must be a parody

[theaudientvoid]

I'm on arc 5 😇

[theaudientvoid]

If you aren't a comics reader, then you probably only know Geoff Johns as the man responsible for Wonder Women '84 sucking. But you should also know that as a teenager, he once wrote in to the letters page of Superboy to suggest that they reveal that Superboy was secretly a clone of Lex Luthor. And when he later became a writer at DC, he made that canon.

[theaudientvoid]

It's been barely five years, and somehow Doomsday Clock has even less relevancy than Three Jokers. People at least remember that Three Jokers exists.

Doomsday Clock but for DC launching a terrible comic based on Watchmen

[theaudientvoid]

I just think it's beautiful that Geoff Johns was like "I'm going to do Watchmen. Fucking watch me." And then no one read it.

Doomsday Clock but for DC launching a terrible comic based on Watchmen