That's not the author's main point — the author's point is the surprising observation that “That joke isn't funny any more”, even to the author himself. This is something deeper than the usual “genre of argument” you're referring to.

Eh, he goes out of his way to say

> The good news is that I don’t think that the illiberalism of identity politics will endure much longer. Especially when it comes to the literal policing of humour - and cancellation of comedians for telling the wrong kinds of jokes.

I think it’s still his point.

If you believe that single sentence (that I disagree with him about, but that's neither here nor their) is the entire point of the article, I'd really suggest you read it again, it's far more interesting than that.

No; that's at most a sidenote.

Superpower is one way to phrase it.

Another is illegally using Facebook’s monopoly and data to crush or buy potential competitors. I think the olds used to call that anti-trust.

Fortunately we’ve stopped torturing humans for research and exploring them for their skin, labor and flesh.

Hopefully we can find ways to extend that humanity to the other sentient creatures we currently exploit in the hundreds of billions a year.

"Exploiting," rather than "exploring," I think perhaps, and to the extent you did not mean that first line as a sarcasm, I would say we have made much albeit faltering progress in recent years. Beyond that I agree with you wholeheartedly.

This is true but this analysis fails to consider why hydrogen receives so much interest, because similar reasoning could indicate we should be spending more on every other potential fuel source, including biofuels, and maybe running engines on cellulose.

And the fact that hydrogen is most popular in Germany and Japan should provide a clue.

These are countries with well established ICE car industries and therefore shifting to hydrogen provides the least disruption when it comes to their car manufacturing as well as infrastructure.

The disproportionately high interest in hydrogen is likely not being driven because of a belief in its future success, but likely more as a hope to continuing the status quo.

Can you give 2 examples?

If you believe in good faith that you have not broken the law, and can reasonably convince a jury of that, you almost certainly will receive a lighter sentence than you would have otherwise and in some cases also be acquitted.

So this isn’t really a good argument even if we ignore the fact that it’s a non sequitur.

A better argument is that the good faith exception, while making sense in principle, can easily be abused by the police to make illegally obtained evidence look like it was done in good faith, and therefore the exception itself should be removed because of how difficult it is to actually gauge and enforce.

> If you believe in good faith that you have not broken the law, and can reasonably convince a jury of that, you almost certainly will receive a lighter sentence than you would have otherwise

Juries usually don't decide sentencing, and even if they did I don't think that would matter with crimes viewed as wrong in themselves (mala in se) though it might with crimes viewed as wrong because they are prohibited (mala prohibita).

Well there's also the case that a main component in having your sentence reduced is expressing genuine remorse.

I'm not sure how on earth someone could be remorseful for a mala prohibitum victimless offense while simultaneously maintaining they in good faith thought they were following the law. Any expression of those two views simultaneously would in practice be seen as not much more than "sorry I got caught -- doing something I thought was legal."

Doesn't seem contradictory to explain you thought it was okay and had no ill intent, but now realize your mistake and won't do it again. Requiring regret is problematic when you're claiming innocence (didn't do it), but when all parties agree you did it, your concern is convincing them you won't do it again.

Even if someone manufactures something in the U.S. the odds are they will still be importing some parts from China. Especially in the bike industry where most components are not manufactured in the U.S.

But even if we assume for the sake of argument that the every piece of the bike is manufactured in the U.S., manufacturers will still be affected by the Chinese tariffs.

Their packaging material? Their machinery that they use? The tools that they use? The cost of the plumber they call to fix the bathroom on the shop floor might be higher because the tools the plumber uses have now become more expensive.

And that’s just China. The U.S. has placed tariffs of at least 10% on everything including lumber, aluminum, steel which will raise the cost of everything at every step of the economic activity that leads to the manufacturing and purchasing of a product.

The knowledge gained from the experiments and the knowledge to do the experiments themselves has not gone anywhere. It’s with you.

As the dust settles over the next couple of months and years, it’s very likely other countries will come looking for you, if that hasn’t started already.

Unfortunately a lot of the endowment is probably donated by people who are no longer alive.

And even if they have a trust that’s allowed to make decisions for them, the trusts are unlikely to change the principal’s choices.

And if you divert income from one fund, or liquidate it to raise cash, that comes out of someone's budget one way or another--as the saying goes, you are robbing Peter to pay Paul. And in the long run, it leaves them with less. The feds are trying to force them to choose to cut programs they don't like--they've been explicit about that in the demand letter.

I wouldn’t be surprised if much of the endowment is not legally available to them.

At least when I was heavily involved in the finances of a school with a much smaller endowment, less than 5% of it was general funds. The rest had tremendous restrictions on how it could be used.