phaemon

73 ms·

961.
by phaemon 12y ago
I think that's an excellent analogy for what's occurring at this stage in humankind's development.
962.
by phaemon 12y ago
Ok: The average worker today has a 5 day working week rather than a 6 day working week: a change that was brought about by political means (unions) rather than technological means. The average worker today has an 8 hour working day rather t
963.
by phaemon 12y ago
I like how you identify "walking places and drying clothing on clothes lines" as signs of the collapse of civilisation. To most people, those are normal things.
964.
by phaemon 12y ago
It would also upset the City of London, and therefore won't happen. As a UK citizen, you should realise how entangled they are.
965.
by phaemon 12y ago
There's a big difference between being supported by corporate interests and being supported by union interests. Am I actually defending Labour? After their appalling behaviour? Umm...take it as a defense of the principle rather than th
966.
by phaemon 12y ago
I believe they're not quite subject to the same laws. See: https://www.therules.org/en/actions/stop-stealing-our-wealth for example. That's a specific campaign to stop them being exempt from certain la
967.
by phaemon 12y ago
Oh, and I'm going to be mentioning the Corporation a lot over the next month, in letters to the local press and messages online. The downvotes have motivated me :)
968.
by phaemon 12y ago
Having read the book the specific fault with it is that the results it comes up with from its simple back of the envelope calculations, bear no resemblance to actual reality and are therefore wrong. Including imports is wrong. In your hypot
969.
by phaemon 12y ago
The City of London Corporation is the number one reason to vote Yes for Scottish independence. The concept of the Remembrancer should be utterly repugnant to anyone who believes in democracy over facism. Edit: And I'll note that this w
970.
by phaemon 12y ago
Ok, if we're talking total energy, then 5% rather than 15%. The point still stands. I've no idea why he would include imports. Does he exclude exports? It seems a bit mad. There's a huge difference between me buying some alum
971.
by phaemon 12y ago
I've looked at the book, there's when I checked his figures and they seemed to disagree with reality. So, electricity is about 1/3 of total energy. The 15% figure is the latest one for the last quarter of 2013[1] (PDF, see pa
972.
by phaemon 12y ago
Nope, Scotland over produces and sells to England, but that's still UK, at least for another month ;-) Offshore wind was included in the impossible. There's something off in his figures. Perhaps wind turbines have become more effi
973.
by phaemon 12y ago
Prof Mackay's talk pretty much says that in order to use renewable energy the whole UK would have to be covered in electricity generating equipment. However, 15% of UK energy is generated from renewables (excluding nuclear), which woul
974.
by phaemon 12y ago
Computers can distinguish between human and deer with 100% accuracy in microseconds. Human brains aren't even close. You might as well compare a sprinter to an F1 car.
975.
by phaemon 12y ago
> I certainly wouldn't advocate a unit that's defined as one 60th of a second Veering sharply offtopic, seconds are actually called seconds because they're "second order minutes". So, just as a minute is 1/6
976.
by phaemon 12y ago
Perhaps not to you, but most folk I know (in the UK) aren't quite so hung up about it. I'll sometimes refer to a half-liter as a pint, or a liter as a "couple of pints", or a meter as a yard. Though the pint is by far th
977.
by phaemon 12y ago
(replying to the wish for a name for 2.4m; edited out): Why for the 2.4m, but not the 1.8m or the 3.6m? Surely it makes just as much sense to refer to it as the "two point four" as anything else?
978.
by phaemon 12y ago
There's really only one unit for length: the meter. Centimeters aren't a different unit, they're "hundredths of a meter". You can call your lengths of timber "frobs" if you want, even in public! You could
979.
by phaemon 12y ago
They're usually referred to as 2.4m and 3.6m if that makes it easier for you to track. I converted them to cm as I thought that would be simpler for people.
980.
by phaemon 12y ago
I'm afraid your argument is circular. You're claiming that the ability to divide evenly is an intrinsic quality of Imperial, and then when I point out that actually it can be done in any measurement system (including metric), yo
981.
by phaemon 12y ago
It makes no difference to me. If I described $2.40 as 240 cents, would you suddenly be incapable of dividing it up evenly?
982.
by phaemon 12y ago
It's hardly "glossed over". It's brought up every time metric/imperial is discussed and it never makes any sense. Standard lengths for timber are things like 240cm or 360cm. There is no difficulty dividing them into
983.
by phaemon 12y ago
No, the reason people cared about it was because it meant a faster CPU. The reason people cared about clock speed was because for the same chip it meant a faster CPU. But the misconception that simply "higher clock == fast CPU"
984.
by phaemon 12y ago
>desktop computers haven't got much better in the last 10 years or so I'm sorry, that's just utterly ludicrous. Even if we're just talking about CPUs, the fastest desktop Intel chip in 2004 was the Pentium 4!
985.
by phaemon 12y ago
Hi, sorry I didn't notice your reply before. It's not as tough as it sounds once there's no rent or mortgage. You can count your mortgage as savings for budgeting purposes though. I work from home, so no travel expenses. My b
986.
by phaemon 12y ago
So what? The mail server name has practically nothing to do with the email address. The address is still @hotmail.com. He makes a valid point: why did @outlook.com addresses suddenly become used for scamming?
987.
by phaemon 12y ago
In the UK, we're actually below the median since my wife isn't working at the moment. OTOH, we own our house outright and don't have any crazy expensive habits or any debts, so I still currently save over 50% of my net income
988.
by phaemon 12y ago
Nothing would ever be changed for the better if people simply walked away from problems, rather than discussing them in an attempt to find a solution.
989.
by phaemon 12y ago
>Tip: Did you know that “iron” is pronounced as “I earn”, not as “I Ron”? Who pronounces those the same? And who ever said it was the "correct" way?
990.
by phaemon 12y ago
You'd think that someone who had regularly saved large chunks of their pay for years, and never got in any debt, would be a pretty safe person to give a mortgage to! Perhaps there's a gap in the market there. Or perhaps there aren

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