I’ll believe it when I see it. Batteries are so heavy right now that 80-90% of the available cargo and passenger capacity would be batteries.

For the moment, batteries are better for cars, and something like hydrogen would be better for planes and semi trucks

It wasn’t (maybe still isn’t?) a strictly proportional representation system, so the urban areas get slightly fewer members per vote. More equal than the Electoral College, but still imbalanced in favor of the rural areas where wealthy people have huge estates that have been handed down for generations.

Churchill lost re-election because he made a really tone-deaf radio address on Labour’s plans for socialized medicine, national insurance, and nationalisation of utilities and critical industries (all of which the overwhelming majority of the country wanted), basically calling them communism, said it would require a “gestapo” to implement, and he wouldn’t stand for it.

Clement Atlee more or less thanked him for that speech the next day, and assumed the Prime Minister role after the Tories were absolutely trounced in the 1945 election.

Atlee lasted 6 years. Labour ran the show with a huge majority for a full five year term, then got an unworkably small majority of 5 seats in 1950. Snap election was called in 1951, and Conservatives retook the majority, despite Labour getting 48.8% of the vote, and Conservatives only getting 48.0%.

…Funny how that keeps happening.

Churchill resumed the role of Prime Minister until he retired in 1955.

Podcast, or some insane Art Bell interview from 30 years ago.

I just don’t want to see ads.

I’m of two minds about people not adblocking.

On one hand: Ads are gross noise pollution, and people are increasingly unaware of all the noise around them (or the noise they’re generating) largely because they’ve been passively trained to “tune out” ads. Also consumerism.

On the other hand: As long as there are a significant amount of people oblivious to the possibility of adblock, corporate ad mobsters and the other worst people in the world out there will largely leave those of us blocking their ads alone. If everyone ran adblockers, we’d definitely live in a world of WEI… and probably worse. So, maybe all those people are watching ads so that I don’t have to, as the YouTube thumbnails say.

In the US, there will always be a critical mass of voters ready to end the careers of anyone who tries to do any of the above.

I’d add that buses for the most part don’t help, and we should revive the trolly systems that Goodyear intentionally put out of business, and furthermore build out mega railway projects to take long haul trucks off the road.

Railways need to be nationalized, and we need to make it easier to live rurally without the need for multiple cars and lots of gas consumption.

And we need to start building a bunch of new nuke plants like 30 years ago.

None of that will start to happen until it is way beyond too late though. And even if the US got onboard with the program, there will always be 40% of the planet who won’t. So fuck it, enjoy nature while it lasts. We’ll turn the sky white to geoengineer away some of the solar radiation, but the line will continue to go down from here.

Their company, their rules. A union protest is a work activity directly relating to their roles, relationships, and functions as employees, which a political protest is not.

Google can suffer the public consequences on their own, which may or may not affect their bottom line.

When did they kill Wallet? I continue to use it every day. Just added another membership yesterday, in fact.

It was the style at the time

Stupidest law I’ve heard of this week.

In Atlanta I had a choice of natural gas companies, even though it would have been cheaper if there were simply one single regulated monopoly.

Competing utilities are just a way to give out cash to rent-seeking middlemen.

Almost all of the US states that have more cows than people share borders.

They should all be merged into one state.

This would solve many problems.

Quoth George Carlin… Commandment #11:

Thou shalt keep thy religion to thyself.

Nature is a peer-reviewed journal. One of the most well-known, in fact.

Yeah, way better to stay on Facebook and Nextdoor and deal with actual literal fascists.

I received these about once a week when I was a Spectrum customer. Since I dumped them when ATT fiber became available, I now receive them three times a week.

Hope springs eternal. Most people without an adblocker don’t even notice that their web experience has become an ad-ridden hellscape.

Republicans actively laugh at protesters. If people are protesting, they think, “I’ve gotta be doing something right to be triggering the libs like this.”

/Grew up in a Republican household with all Republican extended family

In fact, the largest protests in history (to that date) were in opposition to starting the Iraq war. Fat load of good that did.

Democrats protest. Republicans vote. Guess who’s running the show.

Let them burn themselves out, then piss on them.