A horse rider I know once had to get an x-ray. They asked him when he broke his neck, since they couldn’t find any notes about it. He didn’t know he had broken it.

Best he can tell, it was from a fall a few years earlier. He spent 6 months grumbling about how slow it was to heal at his age. All the while, 1 wrong twist and his spinal cord could have been cut.

I tend to refer to them as informational Vs conditioning ads.

Informational are actually useful. They let you know a company exists, or a new product is available.

The conditioning ads are the evil ones. They are basically hacking your brain. We often shop based on familiarity, rather than logic. We weigh seeing a product in an ad at almost the same level as a friend recommending it. Throw enough ads at someone and they default to “all my friends recommend it, it must be good.”

I would love to either block or ban conditioning adverts, without also banning informational ones. The former are a lot more slippery at trying to bypass blocks.

There is a path, from the ground, up your leg, across your torso (including your heart) and down your other leg.

This is the reason that downed high voltage power lines are so dangerous. Walking with a long stride can create enough of a differential to fibrillate your heart.

It actually takes all paths proportionally. This is partly why nearby lightning strikes are so dangerous. Even if the ground is a better conductor than your legs, enough current can still flow to stop your heart.

Unfortunately we now need to deal with our own shit. We can’t just ship it halfway around the world and forget about it.

It’s a catch 22. A lot of good products die due to people not knowing they exist (or remembering).

I have no issues with informational based advertising. Basically the polite “we exist” or “we’ve got this now” type adverts. I take offence to adverts trying to mess with my mental familiarity levels. I’m doubly offended when they get aggressive with pushing that on me.

A great example is steam ads. It gives you some when you first start it. It’s trivial to skip or ignore them however. It also sits back and gets out of the way as soon as you’re not interested.

Studies like this aren’t useful against the minority of bigots. It is very useful to counter the shit they put out.

Studies like this give concrete facts that can be used to counter nebulous opinions in the uninformed. There will always be the bigots out there, but we need to cut down the uninformed supporters they rely on to spread their shit.

I have a smart home setup. I originally used a Pi. Unfortunately, it started to become unreliable after about 12-18 months. Apparently it quite a common issue with long term Pi systems.

I eventually changed to a small NUC. A bit less power efficient, but it’s been bomb proof for a few years now.

Having known people with PhDs, it’s closer than you think. It says more about people with PhDs however!

PhDs tend to be specialists. At the extreme end, they can approach idiot savants. Idiot savant is a relatively good way to describe an LLM.

I always knew he was an arsehole, but I thought he was at least a like minded arsehole, when it came to saving the planet.

The trapped kids incident also the first proper crack I noticed in his image. Now, I wouldn’t touch anything of his with a 40’ pole.

While Putin was likely acting on their interests, the current situation has gone completely pear shaped on that front. Putin is stuck. If he backs down, he’s dead, if he doesn’t win, he’s dead. He’s currently riding the limbo between those situations, hoping for a 3rd option.

If he died, the powers behind him would likely take the chance to disengage. The current situation is bad for business, and plans need to be re-thought. It wouldn’t fix things long term, but short term, they would likely back down.

You massively underestimate the complexity and fagility of the systems supporting you right now. Food, power and good production would basically collapse.

The biggest problem is the megacorps, they are too big to fail and so need to be broken up. The best way to do that is to make it financially in their interest to shatter themselves. Power law taxes would help both so it now, and keep companies from growing to that level. It also controls the speed of the change, so the supply lines we rely on remain functional.

Killing the goose blindly is just self destructive. We want to them to be able to die, but we need to reduce their size first. That way better options can take up the slack.

Answer me this. Collapse every company worth more than $1B simultaneously. What would happen to the quality of life of those at the bottom? It would be…bad.

One of the issues is that their value isn’t fixed. A billionaire as relatively little in the way of liquid (or liquidatable) assets. Their company might be worth billions, but, by taking it, you will destabilise it. Its value will plummet.

In order to access that money, you need to syphon it off more slowly. Think of the goose that lays golden eggs. Cutting it open won’t get you a glut of gold. The counterpoint is that you still need to collect the eggs!

In my opinion, we need a tax setup that forces individuals to regress to the mean. (Default is the rich and poor both move towards average when they are of average performance).

We also need to force companies to follow a power law. A few big companies, with the number growing as you move down. A tax setup that punishes forming big conglomerates, and so encourages more medium and small companies would be optimal. Have it adjust based on the overall industry. This both keeps industries competitive, and syphons money from those most able to bear it.

There is a huge difference between knowing what is needed, and how the fuck to implement it however!

I’ve not tried reflashing, but the os seems mostly vanilla android. I’ve had a couple of OS updates since I got my phone, so it’s not just fire and forget. I’m not sure about long term however. You might also have issues with the thermal camera, if you reflash. I don’t know how it’s wired internally, and whether a non custom app will play nice.

They seem to be aiming at builders/workmen as a rugged phone with long battery life. They also seem to be trying to build a proper brand, not just a throw away one. Hopefully that means they will at least do security updates for quite a while. But that’s speculation.

Oh, and it’s a brick, weight wise. I personally like that, but it’s quite polarising when people try it.

I got fed up with this and ran across ulefone. Some of their phones are downright ridiculous but I’m happy with mine.

It’s a waterproof brick with good grip and a 10,000mAh battery. Good for up to 4 days. It’s also got rubberised grips and takes a beating. Oh, it also has a headphone port, and thermal imaging.

I refer to it as the tolerance pact. I’ll tolerate the weird things you do, so long as they don’t significantly affect the unwilling. In return, I expect you to tolerate the same from my weird stuff.

There’s also a slightly weaker addition where I will help stand up for those that are both under the pact and under attack. (“They came for…”)

Nazis and an alarming section of the political right are breaking that pact. They are void of protection by it.

That racks with what it looks like from here. It was also a perfect storm of events to cause it. The old wanted the glory of the empire back. The young were lashing out at the PM for unrelated reasons. Enough of the middle aged brought into Boris’ lies.

That combined with leave having an excellent campaign, while remain were lackluster to non-existent. Lastly, enough remain voters couldn’t comprehend enough people being stupid enough for it to matter, and so didn’t bother voting.

The rich then latched onto it, and ran away with it. It let them both firesale the UK economy, and dodge some embarrassing tax rules Europe was bringing in.

I’m glad there has been some benefits to it. Even if they are just “look at what happened to those idiots, don’t do that!”

Given what it took to put that particular beast to sleep, a lot of leaders are nervous to wake it back up.

I agree something needs to be done, but the idea of a militant Europe again is a worrying thought.

It has taught a lot of Brits how good being in the EU was (by taking away the benefits). All the “advantages” have also evaporated like pixy dust.