Expats generally have no intention of integrating into the host society. It also generally excludes students. Basically living there indefinitely, without true intent to remain permanently.

Beyond that, it’s so slightly racist. English in Spain are expats. Spaniards in Britain, immigrants.

Fusion has been 10 years away, with proper funding. It never got that funding. It struggled to maintain the break even funding to keep skilled people employed, and the lights on.

The difference is that over unity has been achieved, in a normally sustainable manner. The funding is such that it’s 5-10 years at current funding. Most of that is building the actual test plants.

I fully agree that renewables are currently the best cost option. The catch is that they are not viable everywhere. They are also inherently low density, so can get expensive in certain areas.

Basically, we want a mix of options, to fit local requirements. Nuclear (and later fusion) should be part of the plan.

In practice, I’m of the take what we can get. We need to crash CO2 output, and we need to do it yesterday. Anything speeding that up is a win, as far as I’m concerned.

It’s relative harm. New nuclear is far cleaner than coal, and can slot into it’s place in the grid. We should have done this decades ago, but the plans languished till china found out about them. (Much to the designers joy)

It’s also not an either/or situation. As china is demonstrating, there is a limit to how quickly you can roll out renewables. Doing other, pollution reduction in parallel makes sense.

Taking nuclear off the table was the biggest win the oil barrons pulled off.

On a plus side, we will finally find out if fusion is viable in the next 5-10 years. The first over-unity test reactors, designed for sustained operation are being built.

Coal plants put out more radioactive material than even the bomb factories they call nuclear power plants. Newer plant designs are FAR more fail safe too, and some can actually ‘eat’ the waste from older plants.

New nuclear is right up there with renewables, with the added bonus of being great for baseloads. The only problem is we needed to be building it 20 years ago, since it takes a long time to design, permit and build them properly. If we try to rely on them now, it will be too late.

Parenthood. You reach the point of pure exhaustion somewhere around 6 months. Depending on your child, it can last for years.

Yourself, along with some martial arts training.

You won’t be doing any Bruce Lee moves with basic training, but even basic training can make a big difference.

One of the first things you learnt in most martial arts is how to balance and move. This, combined with some basic blocks, is often enough to disengage and retreat quickly. It also helps train your brain to drop into defence/combat mode when required. This stops you freezing up for a critical few seconds.

Any weapon is mostly useless without the training to use it in the heat of an encounter. If you’re going to train with something, it might as well be a weapon you will always have available.

My preference is Tae Kwon Do, but any general martial art will be hugely beneficial.

Oh, and as a side effect, martial arts often help train a mindset change. You know you can defend yourself, and so subconsciously project confidence. It makes you less of a target to begin with.

I have an internal mindscape. It’s closer to a layered interactive data stream than anything else.

One of the ‘nodes’ on that is my speech center. Unless I block it, it tries to turn the data stream into a word stream. They then loops into the auditory ‘node’. That then tries to process it the same as someone else talking to me. It lets me use all the filters and processing tools I built up as a child. It is excellent at finding holes in my ideas, the same way I would mentally pull apart what I was being told by someone else. It also lets me crystallise ideas into a form that can be passed to someone else.

I can suppress my inner monologue (unless I actively require it, e.g. for writing this message) but generally I don’t. It’s useful when I need to deep dive a problem. My brain can outrun my word stream, and dropping it can let me attack problems without the limitations of language caging me.

Any government run system needs something to trim the bloat down. Otherwise there is nothing to stop it becoming dangerous. Capitalism relies on profit motives to do this. It works, to an extent.

The problem comes with how to trim. E.g. this programme. Once the barrier was established, it could be trimmed. The fact it worked for 25 years after is proof of this. This (in theory) would free up resources for more critical tasks. The catch is that it needed to hard protect the barrier itself. It also needed the capability to rapidly scale back up. It seems that that was trimmed too, leading to the current crisis.

A dam is a good analogy. It takes a lot of resources to build one. But far less to run and maintain it. You also need the option for emergency maintenance, but that can be shared with other dams or construction projects, when not needed.

The first trim got rid of the construction budget. DOGE got rid of the maintenance budget. Now the dam needs rebuilding, not just maintaining.

On both IOS and android, you can activate the camera without unlocking the phone. On android it’s via a double click of the power button, by default. This makes it far more difficult to delete it quickly.

Combined with an auto upload script makes their job a lot harder.

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.

Depending on the location (mostly motorway services), I will often do something else before picking up food. E.g. go wash my hands properly. I’ve been known to misjudge the time required and be a minute or 2 late. Sometimes the wait can be long enough that I will go sit down for a bit. Again, I sometimes misjudge.

That image will stick in the mind of every school boy (and possibly girl) who sees it. That’s a win for the textbook.

He could give lectures, but the computer massively slowed conversations. He also apparently had a bit of a temper. Some of his colleagues took to wearing steel toe cap shoes because of him (electric wheelchairs are heavy).

I would go with android auto, or Google maps. Nothing like having to log back into your sat back system, every 15 minutes, while driving.

The number of car crashes it would cause would bring a lot of countries to their knees for a while.

I’ve also come across these. There’s a lot we don’t know, all of these could be entirely wrong.

A 15’ chicken with teeth would be terrifying.

In fairness, the only thing many people will lack is water. It’s not an exclusive stash, but in addition to what’s in your cupboards.

You can get 10L or 25L quite cheaply. 1 should do per person, maybe with an extra for cooking. Or just grab some big bottles of water.

A hand cranked flashlight, candles and lighter are all a must anyhow, for a power cut. It might also be worth having a cheap camping stove tucked away.

Food wise. It’s just a big bag of pasta or rice, along with some cans/jars to make it pleasant to eat. Throw in some hiking snack bars and you’re sorted.

I fully agree that nuclear SHOULD have been part of the solution. I disagree that it should now be part of it. We have lost too much knowledge regarding nuclear power to lack of investment. We no longer have time to rebuild that to get it online. Hopefully it can become part of the solution eventually, but 10-20 years is now far too long to wait.

Orbits are all about speed, not height. To deorbit, you need to reduce your speed at the highest part of your orbit. This will lower the lowest part. You jump off the back. You would need to jump FAR harder than your legs are capable of though.

Unfortunately, the sheer speed will kill you, without shielding. As you hit the air, you are going so fast, the air can’t get out of your way. You compress it ahead of you, that heats it up. It gets hot enough to melt most metals. The air will cook you, long before you get slow enough to use your parachute.

For comparison, terminal velocity (max speed you reach falling) is around 200km/h. Orbital velocity is 7km/s or around 25200km/h.

You just need to snuggle your face into it and breathe deeply!