benlumen

What are you talking about, "new narrative"? We're not all narrative-driven bots, you know. I've been reading about Elon Musk since before anyone else I knew had even heard of him and have always admired his endeavours.

This is fascinating and exciting to me, to be honest. Like a lot of people around here I'm sure, I've spent a lot of time thinking about Twitter's influence on our society and I can't say it's positive. The degree to which politicians all now depend on it unquestioningly bothers me a lot. The way our adversaries use it to subvert us is worrying. What it does to people's health isn't good.

Musk is the one billionaire that I honestly believe thinks of humanity's best interests in the big picture, long term. He's clearly identified Twitter and social media in general as a challenge to be wrestled with. Just really glad about it tbh.

Are you saying that because for the SaaS company, $100 in income can service $20,000 in debt?

I meant of the situation now. He's literally exiled in Russia when he could have been working to protect us against Russia.

What sort of response is that? I'm sorry but yes, it is. You can very quickly look this up. Small island nations and city states aside, there are only a handful of major countries more populated than England.

They spent 100 billion pounds on lateral flow tests alone. I enjoyed the free test kits as much as everyone else, but think of the infrastructure that could have paid for.

The Ruble has devalued against the Euro by almost exactly the same amount. What am I missing?

It is, isn't it?

https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2020-05-08-the-much-more-p...

Call me old-fashioned but I could argue that "everyone" benefits from a world where we can still economically isolate genocidal regimes.

We do away with this power at our peril.

To whom? Lawless despots?

That's a 50% currency devaluation in a fortnight while the country's main export is still barely in the crosshairs. Russia might really be done.

If you don't yet believe this is a thing - https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ivan+kuliak&ia=web

Not that high compared to where? The whole of England itself is statistically one of the most densely populated countries on earth.

Interesting that you mention Oxford - Oxfordshire's towns and villages are being transformed by soulless new housing estates with no corresponding increase in public service provision; you can drive for miles from here and into neighbouring counties and not stop seeing them. I don't recognise this area at all compared to growing up.

Genuinely can't speak to the xenophobia, rarely encounter it and don't let it go unchallenged when I do.

Most people understand, if they're being honest, that we're not a xenophobic nation in the slightest.

I think the UK's anti-immigration sentiment is basically driven by chronic overpopulation in the South East. House prices won't come down despite near-constant development and congestion gets worse and worse. This is why the Scottish (for example), just don't get it. They simply don't have these problems in other parts of the union.

Young professional couples are stuck in an extortionate rental market or, if they're lucky, can spend most of their income on a mortgage on a fraction of the box they live in and still pay rent on the rest.

All that said, as a resident of the SE, the door should be open to Ukrainians. They're fighting a war on The West on behalf of all of us at this point and our problems are comparitively trivial.

Russia's word is worth less than nothing.

It feels like they'll stop when we stop them, at this point.

Too right, they did. As a peak-oiler at the time I paid close attention to the run-up to $150 and the financial crisis that followed.

And now fear we're in for a replay.

I still keep a pair of CRTs around for light gun games. Time Crisis 2 on system link (2 TVs, 2 PS2s) is particularly awesome.

And to think - he was perfectly placed to be on the right side of this thing, doing national cybersecurity.

As an idealistic, naive teenager, I agreed with him and thought him a hero. I've gotten older and changed my views.

Yet he's attached his whole life to his. I wonder what he really thinks now?

Without looking up the World Service bands, I wonder why Shortwave and not Mediumwave, for better propagation?

Demonic possession?

Maybe it's my surname, but it just looks like a population map.

Back in the day, Rockbox was the way to play FLAC on your iPod. I never found it to be as responsive or stable, though. Would be tempted to update my old Classic to solid state but keep the official firmware.

Wish we had this in UK towns and cities. So many people tolerate so much noise intrusion from a handful of imbeciles doing it deliberately.

Do you live in the UK? We had harsh, cruel, extended lockdowns. Like - no talking to friends on the street lockdowns. For like months at a time. Johnson, who subjected us to this, was having house parties the whole time. Most Brits would push the creep in front of a bus at this point.

You don’t give it 28 years? In the early 2000s I was in the “fast crash” camp, too. Not anymore.

I don't know about everyone else, but I usually bookmark to read later. I built a simple bookmarking webapp for this while in university over 10 years ago, pre-Pocket, even.

The thing is, I usually don't read it later.

Next time you bookmark something to read later, or send it to yourself, or whatever you do - maybe stop and ask: am I actually ever going to open this again?

Chances are you're reading articles to procrastinate, and if it's too long or not interesting enough to read even then, bookmarking it is just procrastinating on the procrastination.

Humanity will surely survive one way or another - when I say apocalypse I don't mean complete and total extinction.

Civilisation adapted to covid because we had power and communication. It simply won't survive the instantaneous loss of both for an extended period.

With pre-industrial population levels, maybe we could survive in our towns and villages without electricity and communication. But now? I think the suffering would be unimaginable.

Couldn't agree more. I'm particularly upset that it's turned our journalists into click-farmers who experience no consequences for the damage and division they're causing. That has been a huge, huge blow to our society in my opinion.

At least it brought us the likes of Lex Fridman.

Fair enough, not sure where I heard that from. Maybe it's more troublesome in the UK, or just a misconception on my part.