The problem is, that provides a smoke screen for the enemy. They say it as a “joke” till the joke becomes the new normal.

• Take a look at the current state of the US.

• Take a look at the “jokes” flying around 4chan etc 10 years ago.

It’s akin to throwing a string of fire crackers into a veterans retirement home.

There’s an awkward open secret in the UK.

The new forest has a significant ‘wild’ pony population. More than the forest can support over winter. The excess is gathered up and sold. While some are brought as riders, most are sold to france. On a completely unrelated note. France has no problem eating horse.

In basic terms. Humans have a hibernation instinct, from somewhere in our past. When the days start to get short, and we get less sunlight, our brain tries to kick this in. It makes us want to be lethargic and sleep a lot. Unfortunately, modern life isn’t conducive to this. When you push past it, the effects are very similar to depression.

Different people are affected to different degrees. Some are downright miserable, others unaffected. It’s also possible to treat it. Sun lamps can trick the brain into thinking it’s not winter, as vitamin D. The effectiveness of this can vary, however, and it doesn’t compete with the real sun jumpstarting your brain back to full functionality.

A van can’t deal with even remotely muddy grass. I lost count of how many vans I rescued, back when I had my pickup. They are also a lot less effective at dragging a horse trailer etc. Vans also (generally) don’t have back seats. If you’re also having to trek up and down the motorways, then the comfort of the ranger makes a big difference.

They have there place, but they are in the same boat as vans etc. They are commercial vehicles, to do a job, not city runabouts to stroke egos.

I fully agree, there’s some stupid ones out there. But they are actually less common than you initially think.

I spend far too long going up and down the motorways. I get bored and start comparing the various problematic cars. Most lack the nice clean cut off line, or it’s set so high as to be invisible. I’ve rarely been dazzled by cars with a properly set beam dip. It’s either high beams, or messed up beam dip.

The rudeness comes from London mostly. When you pack people too close together, they tend to develop a bunch of social rules, to keep sane. Those rules are unspoken and dynamic. That also cause an impressive reaction when you break them by mistake. It’s quite common worldwide, but London it particular about them.

Once you’re clear of the big smoke, and get a feel for the lingo and etiquette, we are actually quite a friendly bunch.

That’s still a problem, but it’s not a new one. There’s always been the issue that lights bright enough to see ahead reliably are also bright enough to dazzle. It’s also a lot easier to cope with a quick flash, however, rather than continuous glare.

The issue with a lot of LED lights isn’t brightness, its beam dip. The light should be angled downwards so it never shines into the oncoming traffic.

Unfortunately, a lot of retrofitted brighter bulbs don’t play nicely with the beam dips. Car companies also err towards helping their diver, rather than the oncoming ones.

It looks like a UK bus. If you want to help make the bus company’s life miserable there is a useful trick. This is the sort of thing a lot of parish council members will get disproportionately angry about. They also tend to have far less to do than higher bits of government. They also know a lot more about the inner workings of local government, and who’s ear to burn about it. A politely written letter (or a few from several people) can get them up in arms about it.

Once you set that in motion, wait a week or 2, then also contact the local papers about it. I’ve seen them roll with far smaller stories than this.

Neither group has much/any hard power, but the soft power of the NIMBY croud can be extremely effective against public facing companies.

Edit to add.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/artificial-light-nuisances-how-councils-deal-with-complaints

It could be argued that that light is a statutory nuisance.

I’ve seen that functionality on an oven (Inc mine, though I don’t use it). I’ve never seen it on a hob before.

There is the term neurodiverse, which is an easy catch all for neurologically abnormal, but not broken.

Neurospicy is a play on this, spicy vs bland. People have strong opinions on spicy, very few have strong opinions on bland food.

Right now, we have more than enough to support basic necessities for everyone. It’s mostly a distribution issue now. It’s also being fucked up by run away capitalism creating artificial scarcity.

You will have a hard time getting anyone to join a system that others nothing more than gruel, a grey jumpsuit and a dorm bunk.I would strongly suspect such a system of funneling thr excess to a few elites.

The question is, how to judge values, without a capital based system at all. What is a lead brick worth in corn, or bananas?

I agree that a hyper focus on efficiency is a bad plan. At the same time, we would need some corrective mechanism.

A good example would be food preference. Say you have 3 food options, A,B and C. A is the easiest to produce, but bland. B and C are more difficult and so more limited. Some people love B but hate C, others vice versa. Some people would happily just have A, and use the excess value on other luxuries. How do you resolve this?

A limited capital based system would find it easy. Each person has an assigned value. They can choose how to distribute it. This dynamically finds the fairest distribution. By passing it to the farmers, they can choose how to direct effort.

As for regulatory capture, etc. That’s a sign that capitalism is getting out of control. It’s akin to your curtains starting to smoulder. It needs to be used like fire on a wooden ship, with extreme care and control.

A fully planned system has also shown to become highly inefficient.

The the key phrase there is “under capitalism”. My point is capitalism can’t be the top level. If it is, then it will run away, exactly as Marx saw.

At the same time, it’s an incredibly effective tool. It allows for dynamic value assessment in a system that has minimal trust. It’s a perfect method of fairly distributing luxuries. It’s akin to a fire being useful when trapped in a fireplace, or a blast furnace. The problems occur when it’s allowed to run amock.

How would you go about fairly distributing limited luxuries, particularly when the value to a given person varies?

Capitalism is like fire. Unchecked, it will happily consume your house. Never the less, it’s an excellent tool for certain tasks. It must be handled with care and contained appropriately.

Right now, a lit of the world looks like London during the great fire. Capitalism has been allowed to run unchecked, and has gotten completely out of control. The massive dilemma is how to reign it in, without collapsing large chunks of society.

Abandoning Capitalism completely is almost as bad as letting it run unchecked.

The atmosphere stops a lot of the high energy stuff. It gets absorbed, and turned into a shower of lower energy particles.

I remember reading once about an astronaut seeing blue flashes in their eyes. When they realised, they got behind the water tank sharpish. It was high energy particles passing through their eyeballs.

I use auto generated passphrases. It’s mostly for the occasions where I need to give the password to someone, without logging into my bitwarden account, on the device. It’s a lot easier, for comparable levels of security.

It would work fine in a vacuum, e.g. on the moon. Unfortunately, on earth we have a thick atmosphere to deal with. Orbits are about going sideways VERY fast. If you try and plough through the atmosphere at 7km/second it creates a LOT of heat, and uses a LOT of energy. You also can’t just lob a satellite up. It will need to circularise its orbit, so you need to log an engine and fuel too.

Basically, it’s viable as a technological idea, but not on earth.