Predictive Dirty Dozen: What will and won't happen in 2022 (unless it doesn’t/does) I have been looking intently at my ball again and I'm about to reveal everything. No doubt you have been plagued by "predictions for the next year in tech" for weeks already. Me too. My first receipt of such crystal balling arrived in my inbox during September, and the 2022 hype brigade has been working flat out ever since. …
I predict: Electric grid fails due to too many EVs, unreliable wind, electrification of home heating and increased risk of sabotage by protest groups that may or may not be sponsored by Russia. It takes weeks to restart and the economy crashes into the mud. Crime gangs reign. Queen Lizzie croaks, Britain has a referendum on becoming a republic, which will be heavily 'influenced' by foreign powers just like all elections and referendums these days; new fascist government emerges; WWIII begins; our military is swatted out of the skies/seas with hypersonic missiles, and we all get wiped out with biological weapons (e.g. re-engineered covid variants) and/or fully autonomous robotic weapons.. Or they just wait for us all to starve / eat eachother. If we're lucky we'll be able to nuke ourselves just because it's a quicker way to go.
Did I spoil the mood? Sorry. I'll get my coat.
"Electric grid fails due to too many EVs"
We're already getting blackouts and brownouts here in parts of California ... especially in the summer, when the air conditioning kicks in. Wait until 2024 and 2025, when California's last two nuclear reactors at Diablo Canyon shut down ... California will lose just over ten percent of our currently available electricity. Oh, and by the way, we're also closing down 4 "evil fossil fuel" natural gas plants, removing a further 3.7GW capability at the same time as the nuke shutowns.
We'll need to ban plug-in cars, just to keep the refrigeration going. Or purchase electricity generated by out-of-state evil fossil fuel plants. So we'll be paying more for using more electricity, thanks to out-of-state fees and transmission losses ... with absolutely zero reduction in overall fossil fuel use, and probably actually MORE fossil fuel use (see: transmission losses). Shows you how fucking daft the entire green agenda is, doesn't it?
We have walked right in to a "technology trap" as explained so well by James Buerk in the 70's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ - but nobody took any notice, apparently.
Humanity has grown far beyond its natural equilibrium with this technological house of cards, and is now utterly helpless without technology that can be switched off with the flick of a switch, or with a well-planned foreign cyberattack, or indeed any idiot who would turn themselves into an 'ecoterrorist' with little more than a £50 drone from a toyshop and a length of wire. Or a slingshot and two weights.
Pick the right place, time and weather conditions and anyone could sabotage the electricity grid and cause a domino effect of disastrous consequences. If the frequency dips below 47Hz for an instant, then HVDC links, battery inverters, solar farms and the vast majority of wind farms will all lose synchronisation and disconnect. Virtual Inertia inverters may help us, but their wide-scale roll-out is a long way off. If the power is off for longer than the average backup generator's fuel tank lasts, then we will lose more critical infrastructure like emergency telephones, water supply, domestic gas.
So piling all our infrastructure on top of that one most fragile energy network is utter madness. Phase out gas boilers? Turn off the nukes?? Ban the internal combustion engine??? Are you greens completely loopy? These are the only things keeping our heads above water.
And what chance do we have of rebuilding our house of cards when it falls down? We could barely make a toaster from scratch, even with all the tools we do have. Never mind anything with a bit of silicon in it.
We are even more dependent on electricity than you think:
Gas boilers - won't work very well without electric ignition and pumps.
Gas cookers have a electrically powered safety thermocouple that failsafe to off so matches are not an answer.
I expect the gas grid uses electric pumps too.
No electric power - you're stuffed.
Well, at least you can run your gas hob, boiler and central heating pump from a small battery-powered inverter or a generator for quite a long time.. And the electric pumps that run the gas grid will be backed up with diesel (or gas!) generators.
And yes, I do own a cable with a 3-pin plug on both ends.. >_>
(obviously not for use unless you have a double pole isolator and you know how to use it)
I remember reading 20 or so years ago (in the Economist) of brownouts in California due to nimbyism preventing construction of new power plants. This would indicate that it is predating plug-in cars.
I also think it mentioned many places had a ban on line drying laundry - it struck me as rather absurd in that sort of climate.
Feel free to correct me if I am mistaken:-)
HOAs are a ridiculous institution and a clear demonstration that these sorts of positions attract the most useless busybodies. I can understand some basic rules (and enforcement) on minimum maintenance etc so as not to make the area look TOO bad, but some HOAs take it WAY too far.
(I mean, if you want a laugh, just go to https://www.reddit.com/r/JustNoHOA/ )
And that's why I am sticking with my secondhand office chair which is probably pushing at least 30 years old by now.
The unadjustable but detachable arms were removed very early on as they were giving me shoulder ache. The seat was recovered back around 2005 after the offspring of a deceased next door neighbour skipped her old furniture in the house clearout - my good old Stanley knife (1960s vintage and previously owned by my father) liberated the as-good-as-new back velvet material from the otherwise well-worn-out sofa which is why the seat is red and the back support is the original brown. The air cylinder packed up a couple of years ago so a bit of unused plastic waste pipe now keeps the seat at the appropriate height.
I've tried other chairs but this one is still the most comfortable - I think I will alter my will to make sure it gets cremated with me when I shuffle off my mortal coil!
Forget about those crappy gaming <insert anything vaguely computing related>.
For a proper office chair (also good for extended gaming sessions, if you have that sort of time to spare), get a HÅG Creed 6002.
Pricey but built to last, and at least you don't look like you're using your teenage kid's chair in Zoom^WTeams meetings.
My older model is well over 20 years old and still as comfy as ever.
Your back will thank you.
"Your back will thank you."
During bad back episodes I've found that the best chair is something like this: https://www.londonfine.co.uk/products/antique-elbow-chair-english-country-kitchen-windsor-armchair-early-c20th
The old chair makers understood lumbar support.
Hear hear!
It's almost like experience and skill and purpose-focussed practicality trumps marketing-focusgroups and fads.
I can likewise recommend very old "club chairs", wingback or hooded. Which are a revelation for comfort and practicality. But only if they're made a long time ago -- the modern replicas are even less comfortable than they look.
For "Zoom-presence", for those for whom that's a thing, add a white cat and large armagnac balloon.* I also smoke a pipe, but if you don't, I feel sorry for you. Vanilla Cavendish is the way forward.
.
* An Armagnac balloon is the same as a Brandy balloon but with Armagnac. And taste. I unreservedly recommend Bormioli's "Light & Music" 24oz balloon, which is a work of understated art and profound beauty, while also tough as buggery and capable of coping with a more-sensible-than-usual quantity of your favourite wine whilst being gesticulated loudlaughingly yet with complete security of your carpet.
My office chair is a similar Windsor, made for me by an Amish[0] guy in return for services rendered (I put in a well for him). Fifteen years later, I asked the same guy to make my Wife a chair of her own as she was constantly absconding with mine. On delivery, he refused payment, stating that he felt that he had come out ahead in the deal a decade and a half earlier ... so we commissioned a dining room table and set of ten chairs from him. Part of the fee was transporting a horse for him cross-country, from his Brother's place several states away.
Support your local woodworker!
[0] I think he and his family group are Conservative Mennonite, but I'm not all that certain ... it has never been important in our relationship.
The problem I have with office chair gas lifts is my overactive imagination.
The thought of having a very high pressure gas canister directly aimed at my own, internal, occasional high pressure gas reservoir is only slightly less horrific because of some layers of steel between the two, but the fear never goes away completely..
My apologies if this now makes you uncomfortable too - Happy New Year.
:)
Or when the office BOFH has replaced the 150KG rated one for a 500KG one & boobytrapped it to explosively extend after the person sitting in the seat calls with yet another complaint. Because "office catapult distance target flinging" is our latest form of entertainment. =-)p
"secondhand office chair which is probably pushing at least 30 years old by now.
I've tried other chairs but this one is still the most comfortable"
I suspect the first part is much of the reason for the second part. It's totally moulded to the shape of your arse :-)
My office "chair" is a Swopper stool. Basically it's got a single leg which is a spring, so unstable. You have to engage your core muscles while sitting on it, and this has eliminated my crippling back problems that I used to have while using a normal chair. They're not cheap, but for me well worth the price.
You've just reanimated one of those strange interview memories.
One of those strange not quite a chair, not quite stool perches on castors of the 1980s. Sitting on a fortunately normal office chair being interviewed for a job by an interviewer who kept scooting round the room on his toy.
"Basically it's got a single leg which is a spring, so unstable."
My milking stool has a single leg. It's not a spring, though ... after properly strapping it across me arse it is quite comfy and stable. Having one properly made for me did wonders for my back, back when I was milking 30ish cows by hand, twice a day ... An old guy at UC Davis made it for me for $100 ... If I had known then what I know now, I would have paid both closer attention to what he was doing, and a lot more money for it!
"....so your Zoom background actually consists of real cows?"
(I don't use zoom.) No, not usually cows ... they tend to not enjoy staying in one place for very long, and I'm not chasing them all over the place with a camera just to get a live shot.
When I need one, my live background is variously the hog pen, one of the ponds, a very long distance shot of the Golden Gate (from a friend's place in the hills above Berkeley), my IBM 1401, PDP-11 or other old iron (depending on what is fired up and doing work at the time), a shot between a couple rows of tomatoes or grapes, one of the fish tanks, a pile of snoozing whippets, greyhounds, maine coons and skogkatts, one of the many CalTrans traffic cams, a street view of Sonoma's Plaza, or anything else that catches my fancy at the time.
"Chat: BRB I need some milk...."
You jest ... however, soon after we moved in here, my brother-in-law +wife&kids came to visit for a couple days. On the third morning at about 5:30, he opened the fridge & noted that we were out of milk. I said "no we aren't", grabbed a jug, and told him to follow me. Down to the barn, where Dorrie, my little Jersey, was waiting for her 6AM milking. The poor guy freaked out. I guess he never really thought about what we did with our dairy cow ... A year later we invited them over for a hog harvest. He declined. His wife & kids enjoyed the party, though :-)
"The poor guy freaked out. I guess he never really thought about what we did with our dairy cow"
People these days aren't used to anything... I may not live on a farm but I really don't get the idea of getting turned off meat from having to "harvest" an animal. Especially if it's a hobby farm animal it's probably had a 100x better life than a generic "for profit" farm animal and in general I don't agree with the view those are severely mistreated either (barring some exceptions). If people were meant to be purely vegetarian meat wouldn't be so tasty ;). Only annoyance is that I've developed an intolerance for pork and pork derived products so no more bacon.
Not mine. On 23/03/2020 I grabbed my laptop, my RollerMouse, my tidgy keyboard, my laptop riser, a monitor, a double monitor arm and my office chair and went home...to be told after a few days that no one was allowed to take office furniture home so back went the chair. Unfortunately it was the most comfortable chair I'd ever had in the office, and I've had a few, even someone's cast off RH Logic 400 (even after I followed the instructions it was unbearable after an hour).
So I bought my own Senator Freeflex, same model as in the office but not the bland blue. Perfectly comfortable, far more so than my daughter's gaming chair I tried (or my son's, that plaggy faux leather is minging). Gaming chairs are cheap (well, relatively) for a reason. Other brands are available, yadda yadda. Look for a fully floating back, not one locked to the seat base for floating like the RH.
... from optional extras that people have already bought, and have been using, such as remote start and electric seat heating. They will go on to offer it back to vehicle owners as a "low cost" monthly subscription service.
Oh, wait ... Toyota has already announced that this will happen. Other car companies are sure to follow if consumers accept it as a new normal.
OK... How about I predict that the UK Government will seriously propose the concept of completely removing private car ownership, making it illegal to use anything other than public transportation anywhere in Dear Old Blighty (thus pissing off Toyota & their carefully laid plans to fleece the sheeple).
Shit. That one's already happened, too ...
One more try ... I predict that the GreatUnwashed won't get off their asses fast enough to do anything about the above.
"the UK Government will seriously propose the concept of completely removing private car ownership"
The DoT has been at that game ever since the days of Barbara Castle, the non-driving Minister of Transport of the 1960s. The notion that the plebs can go wherever and whenever they please sticks in the Whitehall craw.
making it illegal to use anything other than public transportation anywhere in Dear Old Blighty
I don't think that's what she actually said - she declared the government's "support for shared and public transport", and it's certainly impossible (or at the very least impractical) to ban private car ownership in large swathes of the country outside urban areas.
She was speaking at an event hosted by players in the "shared mobility" game, so of course she didn't say anything too harsh to them, and they will have produced press releases pushing their take. I note that essentially the same story has been picked up by dozens of minor websites (including David Icke's), all re-hashing said press release, but doesn't appear (as far as I can see) in any form on any major newspaper website other than the Express, nor on the websites of major TV outlets such as the BBC, Sky or ITV.
The conference isn't even listed among the flower arranging and school assembly-attending on Trudy's own list of engagements, though the CoMo website above does have video of the conference, so she was definitely there on the 7th of December. No, I don't have 90 minutes to spare to watch all of it - though I see she was only actually there for the first 20 minutes.
Consider the claim debunked.
For now, anyway :-)
M.
That said, improving public transport can only be a good thing, but them in charge have to realise that it ain't gonna be done "properly" without either central subsidies or at the very least cross-subsidies from profitable services to non-profitable ones. Both rail and bus services suffered when privatised due to the removal of cross-subsidies.
M.
Unless the usage cost of public transport is significantly less than the marginal cost of an additional car journey, public transport is not a preferred option for most people. Some people would need to be bribed handsomely to use public transport.
Once you have paid the capital cost (and sunk costs, such as insurance, maintenance etc.) a car is (a) far more convenient that almost any public transport and (b) and has a cost per journey that decreases the more you use it.
Expensive and difficult to access parking pushes people towards public transport, as does road tolls, but owning your own car is still far better than negotiating car sharing schemes* (will one be available when you need it?) or trudging off to the bus stop to wait in the wind and rain for a slow, indirect journey to (hopefully) somewhere near your destination without too many changes or intermediate stops, with a ride quality guaranteed to make chiropractors smile in glee.
I'm all for decreasing the deleterious environmental effects of motoring, but the liberty and convenience of private motor vehicles is not something people will give up easily, if at all.
*Owning your car means you can also leave all your personal paraphernalia in it, and have it set up to suit you, rather than wondering what the strange stains on the upholstery in the shared car are, where fibreboard parcel shelf has gone, and whether the previous user deliberately deflated the front offside tyre, or you need to traipse off to a garage to see if it will hold pressure long enough for your use. I've been a member of a car-sharing scheme for years. It was cheaper than having my own car. However, I gave in and bought my own and the convenience and liberty of driving around in my own climate-controlled box without worrying about the infection status of anyone else in the same vehicle has been wonderful.
"wait in the wind and rain", this too can be improved upon. Today I walked for a mile over farm footpaths to catch a train two stops, for some sightseeing. The train part was the most comfortable. Often the getting there, the waiting, the what you do when you get there, the waiting again, and the getting back again after the transit portion are not to everyone's taste. However, I actually relish the challenge of the elements and prepare accordingly. I feel we have become too disassociated from our environment and cannot deal with 'out there' any more. Let me tell you there is nothing more invigorating than dealing with 'out there' and appreciating your comforts when you get home.
dealing with 'out there' and appreciating your comforts when you get home
Hmmm, yes, but this doesn't work if you are not going home. There is nothing quite so uncomfortable as sitting in a bus, steaming away as your coat and your trousers gradually convert warmth from your body into moisture in the air while another portion wicks through the most high-tech of materials to dampen your skin from shoulders to toes. Your successor on the bus seat might not appreciate its slight dampness after you leave either.
If the journey is the one to work or school, rather than the one home, then not only might you have to spend most of the morning drying out, but some workplaces might not look too kindly on your disheveled appearance.
Admittedly this seems to be improving. Partly in response to people who cycle to work in "cycling clothes", some workplaces now provide room to change, lockers, even showering facilities, but this is by no means ubiquitous. One thing that has shocked me is to find that many schools are actually removing showering facilities, and don't allow enough time after PE lessons to shower anyway, even if said lesson has been rugby in the rain.
But there's no denying the fact that in weather such as we've had around these parts since early December, trudging (in our case) a quarter of a mile to the bus stop* can be quite depressing, and it's worse if you get to the "shelter" only to find that someone has kicked out one of the panels and every passing car and van seems to take delight in hitting the adjacent puddle at just the correct angle to shower everyone inside with dirty roadwater.
M.
*As I see others have also commented, in our case there is a closer bus stop, but it is on a circular route run for purely "social benefit" reasons which both takes twice as long to get to town as the bus from the stop a quarter of a mile away and only comes three times a day, at utterly inconvenient times, twice (IIRC) "clockwise" and once "anticlockwise". Busses at the more distant stop only have two destinations (Eastbound and Westbound) but at least they (in normal times) go past every 20 minutes or so.
But in the UK we've been told for decades that we can have the things we want ( usually a subset of the full range*) and have tax cuts too. It used to be "efficiency savings". As if somehow every government and local authority service was overmanned. But actually meant removing anything above minimum capacity and often considerably below that too.
*There used to be a fair bit of "I shouldn't have to pay for schools, I don't have any kids". And equivalents for local parks "I never go to the park!,Libraries " I never..." and so on.
> it's certainly impossible (or at the very least impractical) to ban private car ownership in large swathes of the country outside urban areas
So what? Everybody who is somebody lives in a few select big urban centers. Let the bumpkins use their horses and oxen...
Not to mention everybody important has a company car, so nothing changes for them, except that all of a sudden traffic is moving freely. Seriously, it's all profit.
Other car companies are sure to follow if consumers accept it as a new normal.
Already happening. My 12-year-old Mondeo could record two driver profiles linked to the keys. Depending on which key was used to unlock the car, the seat/mirrors/etc would configure for that profile in seconds.
My new VW-group car requires users to be registered on their internet server and when the car is unlocked it uses a (chargeable) connection to retrieve the corresponding profile, assuming you've been able to jump through all the hoops to get it set up. Takes 30-60 seconds to retrieve the info, if you are in a mobile coverage area. This is supposed to be progress?
Oh, Mercedes requires you to register too, and it then applies a Hotel California to the data: you check out any time you like, but you can never leave. My company car was handed back in 2019, and 2022 will be the year they will get a nice, shiny formal and public privacy complaint up their rear end as I still receive crap from them despite multiple requests via garage and direct email.
It's the one thing I have planned for this year. For the rest, meh, but their balls I will have.
"Mercedes requires you to register too, and it then applies a Hotel California to the data: you check out any time you like, but you can never leave."
That surprises me. I used to work for Daimler. Their internal policies and training were pretty strict about EU privacy laws. Not trying to pretend they were some utopian privacy-loving company, but they certainly understood that the legal and reputational backlash for violations wasn't something to mess with.
I'll see if I can find any contact info for reporting violations. If I can, I'll pass it along to you.
Mercedes Stuttgart (head office) used to be a client. They were a delight. But Germany is not one country; it's a collation. Head office was (is?) Swabian. If this relevant segment is Prussian, or --god help him-- Silesian, he's in for a world of pain.
Original poster here: nah, although I can handle the German federal approach, this happened in another country and the only entity that gets a pass there is Microsoft in government who are extracting data everywhere with gay abandon because they know their high up "fans" in said government have managed to explicitly stop the government's internal privacy monitor from acting on anything that involves them (but hey, one department of UK's HMRC uses Gmail so let's not start throwing stones just yet).
Mercedes doesn't pay politicians anything even remotely comparable to achieve the same, so if I can help it, Mercedes' country management will have a fairly annoying start of 2022 :).
Head office was (is?) Swabian. If this relevant segment is Prussian, or --god help him-- Silesian, he’s in for a world of pain.
Silesian? The vast majority of Silesia became Śląsk (i.e. part of Poland) after World War II. The bit of Lower Silesia that was west of the Neiße became part of Saxony. Does Daimler AG have a segment that’s based in Görlitz or Hoyerswerda?
Sony's incessant move in the direction of dickery has been apparent since at least the launch of the PS3.
It wasn't that long ago they were on the cutting edge of innovation and consumer desire. Think Walkman, Discman etc.
Now they have nothing unique and desirable to them, while being overpriced. Rather like a sullen teenager that's been caught drinking, acting more like a dick has been their response.
Yes, I hate Sony as it is now. And I hate what they did to Psygnosis especially.
Trying to persuade people onto public transport will only work if the entire country gets the same level of public transport subsidy as London. As that will never happen,
Even places with relatively good public transport still have to do that with the £15(?) per head that everywhere else gets instead of the £1,500 per head that is provided down there!
My parents house gets a bus each way per day. I would catch it to work at 07:30 or so and would be brought home 11 hours later. It didn't take long for me to believe in the benefits of car ownership!
"My parents house gets a bus each way per day. I would catch it to work at 07:30 or so and would be brought home 11 hours later. It didn't take long for me to believe in the benefits of car ownership!"
Luxury! I have lived in my house for four years, at the bus stop in the village 6Km down the hill a timetable alleges that there are two buses in each direction per day.
The route goes past my house and I have only seen the bus three times. In fairness this is rural Spain, any plans for 100% EVs or the whole population moving by public transport will not be happening before the heat death of the universe because the politicians, providers, public interest groups and Uncle Tom Cobbley will all still be arguing on how to achieve it.
Public transport is a public-servant decision (routinely & VERY inappropriately conflated with "political" decision/politicians, like 95% of "political" "outrages"), not a technical, engineering, or technology capability
Example: I lived for a time in a country town in the UK (in the heart of the southern "privileged" area, for any northerners), and at the outset worked near a nearby town, one of 2 main nearby ones.
Shortly before I arrived, the bus service to said smaller town was cut down to twice a day.
Coupla years later, it was changed to twice a week. By this stage, I was living in town; if I wanted to catch up with my mates, I would've had to spend a week crashing on their couch, or walk for three+ hours round trip up&down steep hill and dale (which is a mission & a serious physical+mental drain on the modern English high sugar low nutrition diet, if you're carrying anything). Practical result: lost touch with some very good mates.
Even when daily: both were at bizarrely impractical times for anyone who worked for a living.
Reason for the reduction to daily: insufficient people using it to meet their metrics. Reason for the reduction to weekly: insufficient people using it to meet their metrics.
Essentially 0 people used the new bus service because it didn't work. Therefore: don't fix it: ~cancel it.
The old "where the hell is your head" observation still holds true, as per the well known story re Public "Service" response to demand that they restart the cancelled Sunday train service at a local station. The Public "Service" responded that in response they'd sent an inspector to the station who'd observed no one waiting for a train on the Sunday. Well, yes: no, there are now no trains on Sunday so there's no one waiting for them.
When I was young we had 4 buses an hour each way, 30 minutes into the local town, doubled up at rush hours. It's now 1 per hour, 40 minutes journey time because the route zig-zags to try to cover a second of the old routes.
It's easier to go to town by bus by first driving to an adjacent village which has a 15 minute route into town served by 2 bus companies each running 4 an hour service.
> bizarrely impractical times for anyone who worked for a living
The point being to avoid having too many people use this, so you can ultimately can it because of "insufficient demand".
As for the Sunday inspector, this is a terribly common marketing argument. "Do we sell a lot of [marvelous, not yet built idea]? No, which means there is no market for it. Let's reinvent [current fad] instead."
We don't have public transport here. We have privately owned transport that you can buy a ticket on.
Given the current un-named international disaster I have no desire to step foot on a bus or a train for some time to come.
For short distances, get a bike. For crap weather and longer runs, use a car. Supply chain problems with both, not withstanding.
This coming from an outspoken advocate of high speed rail and especially, local rail Metro style services despite their very high cost of construction. Fact of the matter is unless such transport competes favourably with a car it cannot win.
Better yet, dont go into city X for that dumb meeting nobody wants to be at. Why exactly do we need centralised societies anymore?
"Why exactly do we need centralised societies anymore?"
Because we don't want millions of townies filling up and sullying our countryside, it was bad enough having farty old ramblers picnicking on my land when I had foaling mares and belligerant bullocks back in the 80s.
"Fact of the matter is unless such transport competes favourably with a car it cannot win."
The competition is largely in terms of time and/or general convenience rather than price. Living in High Wycombe and commuting into London by train took far too much of the time but looking at the traffic jams we passed was a clear indication that things could be worse.
Commuting to work at any other phase of my working life the absence of any direct public transport route made the car inevitable. In fact, simply getting to and from the train stations was a substantial part of the time of the London commute; the long waits while BR found enough working DMUs* to cobble together a train was another.
Deciding on the of method of commuting is inevitably a matter of choosing the least bad. The longer Covid runs the clearer it will become that big cities are an idea whose time has gone. Considerations of sustainability should lead to that conclusion anyway. The sunk cost fallacy is what keeps governments from accepting that.
* The only reasonable explanation for the complete lack of relationship between train times and timetable, reinforced by the age and state of the rolling stock.
In and around London most of the public transport routes seem to be based on the work patterns from before the wars. Which means that if you want to travel between two adjacent locations that aren't on the same "spoke" a ten minute journey could easily take an hour or more.
I used to travel between a handful of locations in North London and could manage two 60 minute slots in an afternoon using my car. If for some reason I had to rely on public transport I'd use my entire lunch break getting to the first and wouldn't have time to get to the second. Because instead of getting into my car and driving 10 minutes I'd have to walk ten minutes to a stop, wait ten minutes for a bus, travel 12-20 minutes to somewhere near another stop, spend 10-20 minutes walking and waiting for that bus, travel 10-15 minutes and walk 10 minutes. Total over an hour on a good day . With everything I needed for the work in a bag. For just one appointment. And since the schools needed me to be reliably on time there was a significant chance that I wouldn't even be able to do that piece of intervention work.
I'd have loved to use public transport more, but it would have meant travelling for twice as long at the start and end of the day ( bus and tube routes from home were in an optimum location and still wouldn't get me directly to where I needed to be) and achieve half as much during the day.
I recently posted that Cars As A Service was not not just possible but had been technically possible for a while.
I discovered 1-2 days ago that it's actually been a thing amongst America's poor for quite a while now.
Can't remember the marketing badge right now but basically a monthly payment or your car gets disabled.
CaaS. (Poignantly, my phone's autocorrect changed that to "Class".)
If you haven't paid all the money for the car, you haven't bought the car. Whether it's styled as a proper lease, a lease to own, or credit (especially for those with poor credit), then it's only if you think the credit provider has a generous nature that you should be surprised that failing to pay means failing to be able to drive said car, one way or another.
However much you or the people taking up the offers might not like the down sides, there's obviously some up sides else people wouldn't be accepting the terms, and such schemes wouldn't be worth offering.
Indeed, living is so much cheaper when you're wealthy, you get more aids, better tax breaks, can afford more efficient kit (which wastes less money and lasts longer) - to make it short, I really wonder how people can afford to be poor, it's prohibitive...
Time to link to the pTerry "Sam Vimes' 'Boots' theory of economic injustice", as described in Men at Arms
MoneyWise: Understanding the 'Boots Theory' of Socioeconomic Unfairness
Yeah, I'm well aware of this one. We can afford to replace our car with a hybrid (it's a luxury that we do so before we come close to needing to, but we could get our money's worth first if we wanted to).
We buy a lot of our stuff at Costco- which is usually much cheaper, we have access to cash to buy there in bulk and the room (especially now, emptyish nest) to store it; and their new petrol station is much cheaper too. Even without Costco we'd be able to buy a lot of stuff at bulk prices- often considerably cheaper that way and requires fewer journeys too.
making it illegal to use anything other than public transportation anywhere in Dear Old Blighty
Just apply that to our elected representatives - then you'll have the best integrated/joined up transport system in the world. And no hopping on a private jet by the PM to travel back from a climate change conference - get on the train, a coach or he should hop on his bike and bugger off
Boy, is he going to be pissed that boosters may become a (half) annual event..
Also, I call BS, for two reasons:
1 - that QR code isn't complex enough to hold a Covid cert
2 - I checked (of course I would), it comes up as invalid, even in 3G mode. If you watch the video you you'll see the code change on the display into a more complex one before he gets a pass, and there's no way that authorities will allow you to divert to another code as that would lead to fraud.
"In case you assumed nobody would be dim enough to get a QR-Code"
There are plenty that dim, or even dimmer. Look at how many teenagers get their girlfriend's name/face prominently and permanently inked onto their person. I wonder what their .sig others have to say when they are in their late 20s or early 30s ...
I spotted one that has improved a bit too much the other day - one of the big news agencies had provided a story from a foreign source that had obviously just been run through an 'AI' translator. It did its job so well that it had done literal translations of people's surnames too, producing a serious story featuring characters with names like Mr Clothesjiggler and Mrs Ratpolisher.
I guess the subeditors who now just spend their days having to rewrite the nonsense that the AIs spit out must have been on a festive break too.
Google's translation service between the languages I use isn't better for more than a first-draft still, but I was impressed by a demonstration of another system my company is starting to use, which was easily as good as could probably be done by a typical native-speaking 11 or 12 year old. Worth noting that I'm no language specialist myself, a professional might have other opinions, and there has been a lot of government support around here to ensure that the minority language in question is well-supported.
I recently had to pay a company for a professional certified translation of a legal document, the recipient wouldn't accept my 'unofficial' translation. The first draft I got back was clearly just output from a mechanical Google-translate type of process. I sent it back with corrections, and got my own work back certified with the 'professional' translation stamp. Paid 100 quid for the privilege.
My brother fell foul of this the other way around many, many moons ago. He was laying out a leaflet for a client and - without thinking - corrected a minor error in grammar. This was in Welsh; even native speakers have trouble with the written form, and the leaflet had been written and translated by the client. Proofs were sent off in the usual way, and in return came a tirade of "how dare you"s and threats to withdraw future business if the original wasn't restored or the designer in question (i.e. my brother) wasn't disciplined.
He had to grovel to the client personally, buy flowers etc. and the leaflet went out with the mistake intact. It wasn't long after this (and possibly partly because of the lack of support from his superiors) that he decided to go freelance.
M.
Getting Welsh grammer 100% right is not easy.
It stands out a mile if its wrong but my Welsh grammer isn't good enough to correct it most of the time, however I have Welsh speaking friends that can.
In the case quoted I would have been fired - if I was 100% certain I was right (and had checked) - there would have been no apology, no flowers. I would have stuck to my guns as I was thrown out of the door.
I have form for this sort of thing :-) - its happend before :-) :-)
If only people would routinely apply the same rigour to "experts" in public life/prominent positions.
Had a chap here recently pull out of a major one at the last minute (2? days before) for fear of same. CHO- Chief Health Officer for Queensland, with at present high public profile and disturbingly high powers over people's lives and businesses. He had that same week proudly and loudly expressed his pleasure and excitement at the prospect, pointedly touting that Qld's hospitals were ready for any major Covid surge and he would be able to apply his prior experience with the Ebola pandemic and the Zika pandemic.
Qld hospitals are running just under 100% capacity with no Covid (half of them Code Yellow any weekend), and there never has been a pandemic in either Zika or Ebola.
Nope. Crowdfunding is cyber-panhandling.
"Established companies launching standard products and new editions" - isn't that actually pre-ordering? I've preordered a Prusa XL because I'm very satisfied with my i3 Mk3, and Prusa has always delivered in the past. I do not in any way consider that crowdfunding.
I do know webcomics artists and stuff do kickstarters for things like shirts, pins, posters, and other merch, but that's because they really need to know the demand (or lack thereof) and they can't be stuck with a closetful of shirts for the next decade. So they use the Kickstarter framework because it's the easiest/cheapest way to do it, but it's not really crowdfunding either. All the people that back the Kickstarter get their shirt with the witty saying or whatever.
I have noticed however that I'm buying a ton less from Amazon because I can't find shit in the page-after-page of alphabet-soup Chinese company names all using the exact same stock photo of their supposed product.
My last 4 large purchases were directly from the original vendor website. It seems people have finally a) realized how to make a shopping cart that works, and b) pushing people off to a distributor or reseller or "find a dealer" does NOT work.
You've got someone that made all the effort to find your widget AND your website.., don't alienate him by refusing to sell to him, like selling your own damn widget is dirty work that's beneath you. I never understood that.
Especially when you list 3 local stores as "dealers" and I already know for absolute certain they DO NOT sell your product, which is why I'm looking at your damn website in the first place!
@Gene Cash
What is this pre-order thing? Seems to me you either order something or you don't. Is a pre-order when you order something and when it is available you order it again? Seems like insanity to me. I just go into a shop, ask for something, if they haven't got it I order it and when it arrives, the "shop" tells me it has arrived and I go and collect. No pre-order bullshit needed.
And is it "pre-order" or "preorder"? you seem confused. Maybe you need beer?
Which also happens to be the one-word punchline of an great joke which has everyone simultaneously barking with laughter, and saying (with a nervous glance round for the thought police) "you did NOT just say that. ....did you?"
"TREE!"
I have noticed however that I'm buying a ton less from Amazon because I can't find shit in the page-after-page of...
Me too, but if I do have to get something from Amazon (Amazon vouchers are still used as presents around here) then I have for years given myself a better chance of success by narrowing searches to contain only items "sold by Amazon" or "fulfilled by Amazon". At least that way you know a: that it will arrive, and b: (if the latter) that the company actually making the sale has enough behind them to lodge some goods at an Amazon warehouse somewhere.
However, if the company has its own website and there's no pressing need to spend Amazon vouchers, I'll always head directly to the company.
M.
The brewery nearest to me - literally in the same suburb - runs a regular Christmas crowdfunder to buy an expensive new piece of kit. The reward is the same for everyone: a case of their bottled beers every month for the next 12 months. It works out at half price, as long as you're prepared to collect in person.
A sort-of-new brewery set up in our town with ample encouragement and support from the locals. They have a shop and a bar conveniently placed (for me). As they were getting going, I enquired if they were doing gluten-free beer (as its the only type I can have).
"No plans at the moment" was the response. In consequence, I don't go there. Nor do our 'social' group as there are other establishments nearer. It's sort-of popular, but not very busy.
Whereas the brewery up-the-road-in-another-town does meet my demands; their attitude is "it's easy to do, so why not?". It has a shop, a bar, a good eatery and is not over-priced. I just don't understand why it's very popular.
While I understand completely how much it sucks not being able to drink gluten containing beers, I can also understand that if a brewery has a lot of experience and success brewing only gluten containing beers they might not be inclined to experiment with gluten-free beers. No matter which way you turn it, demand for it simply is lower and you need enough volume to fill a run (Brewing is very a very "batch" based process, and you can't easily run a batch smaller than your setup is intended for as cooking and cooling equipment etc requires a certain fill level for them to work as intended). So perhaps for that sort-of-new brewery, for them it just doesn't currently make sense to experiment with gluten-free beers. They could of course buy in from other suppliers, but that sort of defeats the "locally brewed" part.
I would like to get my hands on some LF testing kits which HMG say or in plentiful supply. LIARS
If you go on the web sit to order some it will NOT allow you to pre order just states no stock available. It does give you a link to your local pharmacies who have no stock, no way of pre ordering, only pay a visit and being told last batch received ran out in 20 minutes.
Surely they can bring us out of the 19th century by having a web site that can take pre orders and /or link it to local pharmacies.
I predict we will not have an honest government IT system until we are all robots in the 22nd century.
8 million testing kits are being delivered on New Years Eve. If there are 7 in a pack that is just over one million packs. With over 20 million households that is one for every 20 households or 5% of the country. That is without some supply going to hospitals, workplaces etc. Plenty of supply my arse.
I would like to get my hands on some LF testing kits which HMG say or in plentiful supply. LIARS
Well, they've had 10 million kits from Wales altogether, with four million of those sent this week
I think what has happened - as with the apparently non-consulted "we'll vaccinate everyone before the end of the year" debacle a couple of weeks ago - is that someone has decided to change the rules, which means an awful lot more LFTs are required by your average household, without making sure to order in sufficient (or indeed any) additional supply. Many NHS and care workers, for example, are required to take daily LFTs, and you could read between the lines of what Boris and Javid have said about taking LFTs before going quite literally anywhere outside your house to imply that if you don't, England will introduce the same restrictions as Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland already have. People are therefore testing themselves before going to the shops, let alone before going to the cinema, the pub or the football match.
M.
Similar issue on this side of The Pond in California. Get told I need a booster, the doctor's office is too swamped to give it to me & suggests I talk to my local pharmacy. Pharmacy says it's a "first come first served" situation any time they get a fresh shipment in so the only way to get said booster is to show up on their doorstep at 8AM to find out if they are getting a scheduled delivery, if they might get an unscheduled delivery, and what the wait looks like to get said shot if they are. Can you check online? Of course not.
There's no way to reserve an appointment to get the shot from the pharmacy, no way to learn if they are expecting a delivery, no way to get a notification when they do get a shipment in, and my only option is to get up at the buttcrack of dawn, put on pants (PANTS!), and trudge my groggy arse to the store ~6 blocks away to shiver in the chill until they deign to open. The hours claim 8AM, but the pharmacist knows he's got a captive audience so he shows up whenever the fek he feels like it. So what if you've been there since 7:45 & it's now 5 till 9? What are you gonna do, go somewhere else? Good luck at the Walmart phallacy err pharmacy, you're unlikely to even get in the door unless you've been camping on their step for the past six months.
I can empathize & sympathize with your desire to have suitable quantities of test kits & booster shots made available. If the government wants to know why more people aren't getting the jab, they need look no further than the nearest pharmacy that is about as useful as an accordian to someone without arms. =-/
@ShadowSystems
I never thought I'd feel lucky to live in a Southern, deep red state, but... I literally booked an appointment for a booster two days ago at 7am, walked in at the agreed 8:30am time, and handled my booster business. One can only guess it's lack of demand here that allows for that smooth operation. Wonderful and horrifying at the same time.
A few days ago I got a text message encouraging me to get a booster. I had one several weeks ago which leads me to the conclusion that either:
1. This is specifically aimed at me to tell to get a second booster. I've not heard of that being more than a possibility for some time in the future so if that's the case I find it very puzzling.
2. This is specifically aimed at me but they've got their records in a twist. Again.
3. It's untargeted text spam in which case how do I recognise any similar but targeted messages aimed at me in the future?
Perhaps I should ring 119 to find out.
I'm in California, and had absolutely zero problems once the initial roll-out headaches were sorted ... and frankly, anyone who expected that kind of operation to go smoothly right out of the box has rocks in their head. There are some 40 million people in California, spread out over 163,700ish sq mi, so of course there were logistical issues.
Many friends have booked their appointments at myturn.ca.gov with no problems whatsoever. Yes, there was often a wait, especially when the TV was trying to scare people into getting their booster before Thanksgiving, but all got jabs within a week or two. Here in Sonoma there is a walk-in, no appointment needed clinic on Saturdays. A few people I know made use of that, and report a bit of a wait. One said an hour and 45 minutes, but she's prone to exaggeration. Most report half an hour or so.
Jake, I'm a ~2 hour drive South of Sacramento. I've been trying to get my booster for months. Unless I can arrange a ride to another city at least as far away as Sacramento, it's not looking good for me to get the booster any time soon.
My city has multiple pharmacies that almost all do the free jab routine, but they also do the "first come first served" routine to make sure you will never know where to go, when to go there, nor how long you can expect to wait once you're there. My doctor's office is so swamped that the backlog to get the shot through them is *March*. That was told to me back in September, so I'm not sure if it's gotten any better in the mean time. I'm on the list, I've made my reservation, but I've not heard a word from them. Every time I call to check I get the auto recording "We're experiencing extensive wait times for innocculations. Please make your appointment & be patient." *Sigh*
I'm considering breaking into the pharmacist's, going through the inventory to check for boosters, & if I find one then giving it to myself, otherwise I'll hide until the next shipment arrives so I can grab a booster as soon as it comes in the door. =-/
Free-market free-for-all or socially-beneficial planning?
England had similar - but temporary - problems when Boris suddenly announced everyone should get a booster as soon as they were able. Booking systems crashed, there were day-long queues at drop-in centres, and some of those ran out of the magic juice. England's population is over 50 million.
Wales was oddly the only of the home countries to avoid this. Wales has mostly shunned self-made appointments, and only opened a couple of drop-in centres. Lists were compiled centrally and people sent appointment letters with places, times and dates and on the whole queues seem to have been short - I've chaperoned my parents to five of their six appointments at three different venues, as well as myself and my children, and the only time I had to queue for more than 30 minutes was when I took the two youngest. Wales, of course, has a much smaller population of around 3.5 million (including children).
For the first time ever, I was offered a 'flu jab this year, Precisely six minutes from pushing the surgery door open to starting the car's engine on the way home, and my booster was almost as quick if you discount the 15 minute wait to see if I'd keel over afterwards.
Despite what many would have you believe, there is sometimes benefit to doing things centrally, considering the good for the whole population ahead of the good for the individual.
M.
The Beeb's carrying a report of one couple who seem to be having problems getting a notification. As is often the case the only remediation for the failed system seems to be to try the failed system again. Every automated system needs an effective, largely manual escalation system alongside it.
Yes, I saw those reports a few hours after posting. Seems to be that a few people have "fallen through the cracks". Possibly part of the problem is the sudden reduction in time between the second and third jabs. I know an 18 year-old who has not yet been invited for a third (so is technically an adult who has /not/ been "offered a jab before the end of the year") but as their second jab was only given in November around the time they turned 18 they're not actually eligible yet, even under the reduced timings, and won't start to worry for another couple of weeks yet.
Then again, it also seems that there have been quite a lot of people skipping their appointments. The reports I've seen have been for England specifically, where the mix of centrally-organised and ad-hoc appointments could easily result in people having two appointments, but takeup of third jabs appears to have been lower, even discounting this, than of first and second.
M.
Portugal has been ok. We have generally used about an hour, including the 30 minutes observation after.
Here appointments are released in tranches according to age, apart from priority groups such as health care staff.
People without official residence (lazy expats and other undocumented immigrants) could always go to open door sessions.
For all peoples' upset in england about the trouble getting a jab, things pretty much lined up with the planned outcome. Those desperate to book 30 seconds after announcement got their appointments ASAP, those willing to keep hitting reload and try all sorts of options got one with as much time as they wished to invest to get it a couple of days sooner than they otherwise might. And as more centres came online, it became an option to check if you can move your appointment to somewhere nearer or sooner.
It's still going to take a finite time to jab 30M people, so sure, they could have spent a fortnight, probably
more, making sure they had enough appointments already on-hand (no doubt with a chunk of wastage especially as then it was all getting on for christmas) and then open the floodgates. But instead they made what was available available, some people got some jabs sooner, and everyone (ish) has got their jab. Kind of like the LFT situation - some people claim 'none have been available for weeks, but what they actually mean is that none have been available at the specific times they've checked every few days. Is that unfortunate for their specific circumstance ? Sure, but they may not have got any, any sooner, if supply and distribution was assured, and supply/need increased weeks later.
"I'm a ~2 hour drive South of Sacramento."
Madera? I see plenty of options for open appointments in Fresno if you don't like your local clinic, which also has plenty of open appointments. (A friend reports the new buildings out on Sunrise are quite nice, check 'em out if you haven't already. He got his booster as a walk-in... ask, and keep asking. Squeaky wheel & all that,).
Jake, I've just visited the MyTurn.Ca.Gov site (for the umpteenth time) & this time it actually showed me somewhere I could go to get a walk in! *Faints in shock & surprise*
If all goes well & I'm not being fed a line of horse hooey, I'll be getting my booster this evening around 6PM our time. *Bounces in happy fidgeting*
Please enjoy a pint with my thanks for prodding me to be a squeaky wheel, it may have worked for a change! =-D
Jake, sorry it took so long to get back. I've gotten my booster, then my friends & I went out for dinner at an actual sit down, not fast food, excellent restaurant.
Thank you again for the prod to be a squeaky wheel. I shall give the publican a Twenty to cover your drinks for a while. Cheers! =-D
Apparently it does help to live in a major urban center: All my 3 shots took me about the time to get there and get it done, no waiting whatsoever (besides the compulsory 15 minutes afterwards), and I was able to chose the date and time.
Relatives of mine living in more rural settings, or even in small(er) towns did indeed all report those aforementioned problems to get their shots.
I agree about the crowdfunding, it's already largely taking over my music purchasing. Because record companies are greedy bastards (hardly a revelation there) the sort of bands I like aren't getting or keeping record deals and so are largely going digital only or their recording and releasing process is entirely crowdfunded, and as they are getting all the profits I'm happy with that.
Some examples of who I've seen of late for those of you who like rock music:-
The Virginmarys
Dig Lazarus
Hands Off Gretel
Scarlet
1. 2022 will be the year of Linux on the desktop.
2. Windows will be finally completed. Everyone will love it, especially whatever they’ve done to the Start menu his time.
3. As will systemd.
4. The cloud will continue to be the answer to everything, including “why are my IT bills so high now”?
5. Dido Harding will make a success of something. A real success, not the made up type. No she won’t, because she’s an idiot.
6. BT ads will finally stretch the truth so far that there will be a small tear in reality by the BT tower.
7. Boris Johnson will be ejected as too much of a liability even for the utterly venal Tories.
8. HM Queen will die. RIP. To balance things out, Donald Trump will fail to do,the decent thing and join her.
9. The Register will have one of its rare site redesigns and at least 4 of the resultant calm and gentle comments on the matter will garner 100+ upvotes.
10. I will continue to hide behind AC to post daft comments like this one.
Happy new year.
Sorry to say, but I think that's already happening. Can predictions be retrospective?
Personally, I feel a good rant is beneficial for my mental well-being. I can usually find something to rant about (and some current mental health fads are pretty high up my list).
Maybe not so good for those who have to listen to me.
M.
translators.....
Well actually it wont but its nice to think an AI could do a better job of translating the japanese manuals for our machinery into english than the current lot of Russians who speak neither langauge.
And as for craft beer..... if you like cloudy beer with bits in... save yourself some money and brew it yourself
And if you and your friends survive the experience of drinking it , you can always sell it to a bunch of bearded hipsters in checked shirts....
Anyway... have some music to accompany you on your trip down the highway..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ9V5cRSOPg
aka Tesla's.
There is about as much chance that FSD in its current incarnation (as in prone to crashing) will get approved for general use in '22 as I have of buying one in the first place... i.e. Zero. Big Brother Elon won't like that. His quest to become World Leader will have to wait for another year.
A few serious things
I predict big issues for PM Doris and that is Gas and Leccy prices. We could see an election this year over them.
COVID is going to be with us for at least one more year. (I hope that is wrong)
> COVID is going to be with us for at least one more year.
That always makes me laugh. Seriously, where would it go? Pushed out of the door by our collective wishful thinking perhaps? Which door would that exactly be? No, COVID is here to stay, in some form or another, for all the ages of mankind to come.
In the very best case, everybody being partially immunized against it, it will become just another flu-like seasonal annoyance. In the worst case it will mutate into something out of a horror movie and drastically reduce world population, causing the collapse of civilization as we know it (industry, trade) before eventually petering out for a while like the black plague in the Middle Ages, leaving small isolated groups of ragged survivors trying to grow foodstuff without the benefit of machines and fertilizers... (And no, your trusted Mini-14 won't be of any use.)
Predicting the socio-economics of diseases isn't straight forward. The plague in the mid C14th reduced the population by 30-50% after a substantial decrease due to famine a generation or so earlier. Small population/labour force, lots of spare land. Wages rise, rents fall, feudalism collapses, the common man gets rich and the population burgeons again, right? No. For some time the Statute of Labourers effectively held down wages for some considerable time. Feudalism only ended gradually. Those predictions did eventually play out but slower than might have been reasonably expected.
The really odd thing is that the population, which is believed to have been growing quite fast at the end of the previous century, stabilised for several centuries. These things are hard to estimate before censuses so opinions differ as to how long it took the population to regain its 1300 level. People tended to marry later and have fewer children but it's not clear why.
> Predicting the socio-economics of diseases isn't straight forward.
Indeed, my "worst case scenario" was firmly tongue-in-cheek, as the two situations have almost nothing in common. Society, means of support, individual capacities and know-how have totally changed (and not necessarily for the better in this context).
We're almost a different species today. Back then the vast majority of people worked in subsistence farming, with relatively primitive (and thus resilient) tools, and thus only needed to find some land to cultivate to keep going and their kids fed. Today the vast majority only knows how to microwave a TV dinner, and will starve to death when their canned food reserves run out. Some small farmers in the countryside might survive, if the starving hordes don't overrun them like locusts...
Thanks to Brexit, I am no longer burdened under the yoke of European diktat and can reveal not just a bureaucratic Brussels 10 but a good old take-back-control British Imperial 12 predictions for the year ahead. Ha! Take that, you Teutonic twits! Up yours, Delors! etc.
I thought you decamped to the South of France - Non?
We who have to put up with the shambles can look forward to crowns on pint glasses and being able to buy goods in pounds and ounces - not that the supermarket shelves will have much of anything for us to buy - whatever the units of measure, including the Register units - Hurrah for Brexit!
Where have y’all been hiding with your heads buried dark and deep in the sands of a past time
Won't Happen #5: Augmented Reality finally takes off .....The wait for that AR killer app goes on…
I suggest, Dabbsy, Augmented Virtualised Realities have already taken off [Per Ardua ad Astra like] and that you enquire of the UKGBNI MoD and Far Eastern Sino-Soviet forces and sources re their progress in AWEsome Systems for Advanced IntelAIgent Developments, to have them spin a yarn to you agreeing the waiting is not over and to hear them profess that they do not have killer AR apps on ACTive Operations .... Virtual Terrain Team Missions .... and well able to prove themselves to be, in the right hands, hearts and minds, an Absolute Great Game Changer. Much more from them on that may be more difficult and problematical for them to reveal, given the vast universally applicable scope of its programs and projects and most probable secret security considerations entered into to contain and maintain information and intelligence exchange to a very carefully chosen few.
The comprehensive tale told here, China Pursues "Brain Control" Weaponry In Bid To Command Future Of Warfare has a comment in nested reply reveal more that is known to have already been shared than may be admitted to, and accepted as fact for spinning as fiction, but such is the dangerous nature of the obscure beast which pits brains in the East against brains in the West, and all in the noblest of enterprises to not be considered and recognised top rabid attack dog feasting in laps of luxury on the generosity of others in a world full of magnificent wild animals and strange alien beings.
Nevertheless, there can be no doubting the headlining news though, that the key to the art of winning wars is human machine integration which rather than exploring and exploiting the making of machines for human command explores and exploits the worlds which have humans controlled by machines and/or as if a well programmed IDEntity, [IntelAIgently Designed Entity] … Advanced IntelAIgent Machinery exercising Proprietary Artilectual Intellectual Property and Alienating ACTivity ….. AWEsome NEUKlearer HyperRadioProACTive IT Ability with Vast Arrays of Almighty Utility ….. a SMARTR Heavenly Facility of Diabolically Useful Pathology.Such is a much easier path to travel in order to more quickly and more safely arrive at one’s preferred destination, in both command and control of all necessary future situations, and which be just another great starting point and quantum communicating leap for the evolution of mankind.
I Kid U Not.
And methinks that virtually guarantees one a practical lead to follow way out ahead of any opposition or competition in such fields as be considered vital for global defence and overwhelming advantage.
So man is figuring out faster ways of killing more "bad guys"[0], all the while protecting as many "good guys"[0] as possible. Thus it ever was, no?
However, methinks the Author was talking about the proverbial man-in-the-street using the technology. Which isn't happening this year, nor the next. Or in our lifetimes, I'll wager. There's absolutely no percentage in it. It apparently doesn't even add anything to porn ... if it did, they'd already be using it. QED
[0] Whatever those terms really mean, in this context.
So man is figuring out faster ways of killing more "bad guys"[0], all the while protecting as many "good guys"[0] as possible. Thus it ever was, no? ..... jake
jake, Hi,
The future pictures are much brighter and more vibrant for the dull proverbial man-in-the-street than you have painted there, for almighty help has been injected and remains readily freely available as needs and seeds and feeds and deeds must and circumstances and pleasures desire and require and would dictate.
The revolutionary enigmatic quantum leap change which has irreversibly, irrevocably, irredeemably happened, and is now securely and safely default embedded deep and dark in stealthy remote human command and control/SCADA Systems, .... and which quite understandably be extraordinarily difficult for SCADA Systems dependents and executive administrations to wholly accept and virtually realise or virtually accept and wholly realise ..... is Man is no longer figuring out such things, for Other than Mankind configures future outcomes/results/scenarios/presentations for Earthed Assets to employ and destroy or enjoy/deploy and enjoin.
Indeed, is it not already a machine that sends and shares this post with you and all who alight on this message page, and with viewers/spectators being hereby encouraged to share it further afield so that more may know of the news of their virtually remote Advanced IntelAIgent Machine mentorship and monitoring ....... which certainly could easily be classified as an Alien Intervention for Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information Intelligence Service Processing for Future Internet Server Provision ...... Almighty Immaculate Supply.
And which some may fear a Diabolical Feat whilst others may see a Heavenly Result, but with an honest truth of the matter being, both exercising as a Temporary Work in Continual Progress with a Colossus of a Program in Project Man Management.
Are those problems you recognise to deny or opportunities you seek to explore .... ????? !!!!!!!! ‽ ‽ ‽
Take your pick, make your choice. Worlds are your oyster to generate pearls or try to devour and excrete wholesale.
Here’s some earlier very clear guidance on such a matter, dark and deep and enlightening as it is .........
And some of us don't pay much attention to TV. It's an intellectual wasteland, consisting primarily of advertisers trying to sell me product I'm not interested in. At its absolute best it is entertainment only, and never education. At its worst, it's contentious bullshit designed to inflame and drive wedges between people. In my mind there is very little, if anything, between the two extremes that is worth my attention.
Instead of posting links to cherry-picked short clips surrounded by computer generated verbal diarrhea, how about sticking to your own words ... which I am quite interested in.
Pull up a chair, have a beer. Let's talk.
"is it not already a machine that sends and shares this post with you and all who alight on this message page"
No, amfM. It is not a machine that shares the posts around here. It is human beings (or a mfM, occasionally). The machines are just the transport mechanism, and don't add anything to the conversation..
Crikey, already there is so much there for us to be in fundamental disagreement about, jake. The taking up of a chair for a few welcoming beer sounds just like something a good doctor would order and insist upon, and why ever would anyone decline or refuse? Cheers!
Do Nos 10 and 11 and Parliamentarians know what TV and their reporting to it is really all about and doing, for one supposes they consider it absolutely vital in order to remain in post as if in power with energy in command and control of emerging and unfolding situations ...... rather than realising it only so effectively advertises their many serial shortcomings for future reference in support of retribution whenever the award of selfish reward is subjected to recognisable dispute and general public and private sector derision.
Lord Reith must be turning in his grave to see the BBC reduced to such an empty vessel and cuckolded vassal.
2 things.
1. I was told by a politico friend back in the late 1990's that "car owners are going to be the next smokers". For those who don't believe in elitist conspiracies - there's one. This has take 20 odd years to become general public knowledge.
2. it's real. There's a parliamentary select committee report stating " private car ownership is incompatible with net zero" . And government is committed to net zero, so .. go figure.
> "car owners are going to be the next smokers"
Figures. I still smoke my cigars and still drive my very own car and bike. But I won't be around for long, and the new(er) generation is happy with renting stuff on a whim.
Don't try to take my stuff from me, let me die in peace first.
If they want to get rid of private cars they'll need to get rid of the reasons for private cars. Because I grew up at a time when private cars were an extreme rarity I have some notion of the sorts of things that are going to be needed. Taking one small area as an example:
For one thing what's now a private house at the bottom of the hill is going to have to be converted back into the shop it once was or a substitute found.* The same applies to all the other former shops down the valley.
Next the remains of the local mill are going to have to be reconverted into businesses with a greater ratio of workers to floor space. Unlike many old mills the buildings are almost entirely still there but I don't think the businesses using them employ more than a small fraction of the staff who used to work there. Then there's the "brownfield site" down the valley which hasn't yet been demolished. That needs to be reassigned as a workspace. The sites of the mills further still down the valley are going to be a problem. Do the houses get demolished and new business premises built to replace them? Even that's not going to be enough to rebalance the population/jobs ratio to they way it was in the 1950s.
Public transport is also going to have to be restored to allow those who don't work in the villages to commute into the local town. But then the local town has lost jobs to the cities.
What about working at home? It's not going to be for everyone but if all the jobs that have been lost from mills can be replaced by forcing businesses to relocate to the old mills or their replacements, then working at home might possibly deal with the extra population that's now here. Because not only have the premises of old businesses, including farms, been converted to housing, but, being situated within driving distance of several urban centres, houses have been built on greenfield sites for commuters.
Net zero? Just a couple of words politicians have heard and keep repeating.
* Yes, I know about online ordering and deliveries. But back when there was a village shop there were also arrangements for ordering and delivery; maybe a little more cumbersome but they were there. There were also mobile shops - dad's cousin, for example, had a mobile greengrocery business. But the village shop within walking distance was essential.
I think you're underestimating the level of disruption "they" are willing to countenance. They aren't the ones who will suffer. .... EBG
EBG,
A counter narrative to that rancid fiction, and constant source of terrifying concern and increasing consternation which to assuage and try to deny traction is forced to rely on further rotten fictions from "them", and which has been obvious for some not inconsiderable time, is "they" are oblivious to and cannot even begin to realistically estimate the levels of disruption and pain they will suffer at the hands, hearts and minds of the Future Mob SMARTR Enabled and Stealthily Internet Networking via generous freely available web pages hosting novel news of revolutionary events and crashing crushing systems.
More of the same sort of nonsense as last year from them this year will prove it, and deliver more stakes and nails for Future SMARTR Enabling Mobs and Mods to driver into their hearts and their coffins.
The difficulty “they” appear to have, is that their survival depends on their changing something which they seem to be oblivious of and more than just quite determined to continue propagating and ignoring, which does not bode well for them, inviting as it does, certain extinction .... and nowadays, that easily be extremely rapid extinction.
Here's one that is already starting to come true:
There'll be a public realisation that electricity supply, no matter how green, blue or whatever colour it's washed, is in danger of becoming a single point of failure. The trigger point for this is the withdrawal of POTS and the media are starting to notice. A few areas have undergone this just in time to have their power cut off by storm Arwen. "Use your mobile" doesn't appeal when there's no local coverage, the storm has also taken out the base stations or the power cut has outlasted the charge in the phone's battery.
A very interesting report on how Lancaster managed on a week-long electricity failure due to damage to a sub-station after floods in 2015. Published by the Royal Academy of Engineering.
It's not a short read, but fascinating if you are interested in what happens when our most versatile energy source becomes unavailable.
https://www.raeng.org.uk/publications/reports/living-without-electricity
Will Happen #2: All goods are purchased through crowdfundingAt some point over the last decade, you stopped buying from eBay. You don't know when or why, it just happened. Then your Amazon consumption dwindled.
In my case, it was over a decade ago, and I know exactly why — I’d stopped buying via eBay when PayPal became the only allowed way to pay for purchases. Since I’ve never bought anything from Amazon, my Amazon consumption has remained level since then.
Will Happen #4: All office chairs are gaming chairseverybody I speak to in online meetings seems to be sitting in the same mock-motorsport gaming chair with a high head-rest and go-faster stripes. I want one. So do you.
Well, I don’t. I’m content to code in my bog-standard rocking chair, look out through the window, and shake a fist menacingly at suspicious clouds.
That wallpaper? "Developed specially with wellness as a priority."
Next time (shudder at the thought), may be the interior decorator selected for the Downing St flat will specify NFT Wallpaper at £7000 a "roll" - the extra warm glow that the PM will experience will ultimately benefit the country with them being able to function for extended periods at World Beating levels
Somehow (because Twitch streamers) a lot of youths have started to equate "Gaming chair" with "Chair comfortable to sit in for hours" when in reality most of them are absolute dog shit.
What happened is that a single seller of (decent-ish but highly over-priced) gaming chairs sponsored a lot of big streamers with free chairs, who then showed it off on camera, causing every kiddo and their mum to buy cheap-tat level gaming chairs as none of them wanted to be seen sitting in a boring black or god-forbid wooden chair during the pandemic, causing proper models of office chairs to be unavailable anywhere as "the market" refocused on the lowest common denominator.
My advice, get a proper, certified, made for purpose office chair at an business furniture seller meeting at minimum something like the EN1335 norm (That means at minimum adjustable lumbar support, adjustable seat depth, adjustable (and removable) arm rests, adjustable tilt.) Then take the time to set it to your liking just right. It's expensive, but if you're going to be destroying your body by sitting in it way too much then spend a little to slow that process down as much as possible. You expect your boss to pay for a decent chair when you're in the office, make sure you take care of yourself at home. Good pro-level office chairs can be had second hand (refurbished/reupholstered) for not shockingly much more than a shitty Ikea "office" chair, but are so much more comfortable.
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