dendodge

Driving licences are also the primary form of ID in the UK (alongside passports, which are more expensive). People who can't (or don't) drive can still get a provisional licence, which only allows driving under the supervision of an appropriate adult but works exactly the same for ID purposes.

I'd have thought the private garages would also be incentivised to find problems - that they can then offer to fix for an additional fee.

As it is, I think most garages that offer MOTs in the UK are fair and honest, as the test is relatively strictly regulated, but I'm sure people do get ripped off.

Off-topic, but since you mention it, I've always been confused about what Americans always seem to be doing at the DMV. It seems to be a staple of pop culture that people are always there and the queue is always very long, but I've never known what anyone is actually trying to achieve.

The DVLA in the UK doesn't have a high-street presence. I took my driving test once, then received my driving licence in the post. When it needs renewing, I can do it online. I tax my car online. MOTs (annual vehicle safety tests) happen at any local garage. I've never needed a new numberplate, but I think you can buy those online too.

So what is it you all have to go to the DMV for? Because it sounds horrible.

Similarly, Americans expect people to be aware that California is not "the South", despite being on the southern border, and that the Midwest is actually in the eastern half of the country.

Basically the names of geographical regions don't always make sense.

Quora's ChatGPT answers are, as far as I can tell, more often confidently wrong than they are right. For example, for the question "Which monarch in history had the highest regnal number?" it generates

> The monarch with the highest regnal number in history is Sobhuza II of Swaziland, who reigned for 82 years and 254 days

which is clearly incorrect (2 is not a very big number), and yet gets its own nice answer highlight at the top of Google (where the AI generated nature of the answer is not noted at all).

Wait for Emily Wilson (due at the end of September). Her Odyssey is easily among the great classical translations.

> Thankfully the original work is now out of copyright

Seeing someone explicitly assert the copyright status of a text pushing 3 millennia old is somehow very amusing to me

Possibly a better way to achieve a similar level of prettiness would be (ab)use of vim's conceal feature. Through its judicious use, the author can have "forall" appear to them as ∀, "alpha" as α, etc., without imposing these symbols on their colleagues.

The Economist is a UK publication

> I don't understand what the numbers in the lower corner mean

If you tap on the numbers in the lower corner, you can cycle through various options including % read. My personal preference is for time left in chapter.

23andMe DNA tests claim to tell you what proportion Neanderthal you are. I, for example, have just under 2% Neanderthal DNA (allegedly), which they say is in the 47th percentile.

That's an interesting point.

In the (UK) context of this study/article, blue tits and great tits (and indeed most garden birds) are generally non-migratory in the UK, so I think that's an orthogonal issue.

34% would rather quit than work in the office full time, that's doesn't mean another 16%+ wouldn't also prefer the option but not strongly enough to quit over it. There's also little talk I'm aware of of forcing anyone to work from home permanently, rather than just giving them the option.

Also, I think the assumption that it only applies to jobs that can be done well from home is pretty much baked in already, otherwise it would be quite nonsensical to even ask.

And the phrase "full time" is also important. I very highly value the increased free time and reduced costs I've experienced over the last year, but do miss in-person meetings, casual proximity to colleagues, and social events. The ideal for me would be to work from home 2 or 3 days a week, and I'd favour that quite strongly in career decisions compared to either extreme. I doubt I'm alone in that.

Avoiding the obvious argument that theft is a poor choice of word for this case, I'd like to question whether we actually treat intellectual and traditional property as similarly as IP proponents like to claim.

If you sell me an antique chair, I'm free to upcycle it, transform it into something new, and sell it on. I'm free to examine it and build an exact replica. I can give my chair to whomever I want and let any number of strangers sit on it. Such is the nature of property.

If you sell me a song, I must keep it in your proprietary system, leave the DRM intact, and definitely never even think about remixing it and selling my derived works.

IP is not property, it's a distinct beast of its own. It can't be "stolen" in the traditional sense, and it seems it can't really be bought or sold either.

I'd even accept life. I don't necessarily agree, but I can see the argument that someone should have the exclusive right to profit from their work for the rest of their life. Maybe even add a few years as a grace period to give the estate time to adjust business practices in response to a sudden death.

But why we need to add another 70 years is a mystery to me. How does that encourage creativity and innovation?

I'm finishing my PhD in the next couple of months, and am fortunate enough to have a fiancée and a house. I interviewed for one postdoc and found myself hoping I wouldn't get it because it would mean living apart for a few years, or else uprooting our lives and moving across the country, only to repeat the process in a few years' time, with no guarantee of ever finding a permanent position.

I'm completely lost now, I have no job lined up and no idea what I'll be doing with my life in 3 months' time, but I do know I'm getting out. I love science, I love the research I do, but it's not a steady career. It's nice to hear someone else who feels the same way - inside the academic bubble, anything other than giving your life to the broken system is seen as failure.