The UK is still a lot more multi party at the lower levels of government, compared to the US. Unfortunately it’s erring towards the US system, rather than away from it.

We are in a media bubble. Basically all our media is owned by a few rich arseholes and they bury a lot of anti right messages.

The BBC used to be remarkably honest and independent from government. The conservatives getting their claws into it was the beginning of the real problems. Even worse, the BBC’s impartiality has been so sacrosanct that a lot of older people just believe it.

A mild bit of light. The green party seems to also be making significant advances. Labour have often played the “don’t split the left vote” card on them. Now it looks like green is overtaking them in some areas. It just doesn’t show up well in a FPTP voting system.

The Brexit crowd have gone conspicuously silent about it. Their lack of crowing says a lot about it.

Even before Brexit, the tide had turned, and that’s only gotten stronger. Unfortunately, the government had their vote and hammered it through. (The fact there was an EU rule change, on tax transparency, the next day, and would have embarrassed a lot of rich UK toffs had NOTHING to do with the timing)

Unfortunately, the reform party is far too strong, and trying to drag us to the extreme right. Our “left wing” primary party (Labour) is now further right than the conservatives (center right party) traditionally sit.

It’s… frustrating.

I’d recommend foiling it, rather than clipping. A grounded (0V) metal wrapping will become a Faraday cage. It’s a bit more effort, but is reversible, if you so choose. E.g. when selling it. It is also less likely to trigger a fault sensor condition, and doesn’t void the warranty if the computer craps out.

A bit of a guess, but it might be related to software cafés. They are a lot more common in the east.

Since multiple people can log into the same computer, it might over count them. They are also likely exclusively windows machines.

Pis are excellent mini computers. Unfortunately, their long term reliability isn’t quite there. When I used one, I was getting a couple of lock up crashes a year. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s just enough to be REALLY frustrating to the (less technical) wife. The tipping point is when it goes from “nice to have” to “expected”.

I acquired a 2nd hand NUC, and it’s been bomb proof for a few years now.

The french we can handle. The Danes… they fall in the same category as the Canadians, or the Scots. You don’t pick a fight with them. If you must fight them, you run away throwing gold at them.

I would call that a feature! It means we can use them as caltrops if the French ever invade!

/s

The UK plug is one of the best around. It’s only downside is that it’s chunky. By putting the fuse in the plug, the protection can be customised to what is attached.

It also is designed to be almost impossible to fall out of a wall socket. As well as mandating the pin connection order and safety shielding. The sockets are also gated, stopping children sticking stuff into them.

Even internally they are well designed. The live wire is the weakest link. If pulled, that will tend to fail first. It will, however be held internally by the neutral and earth wires. The earth will be the last to fail.

The side entry also means that the plug locks into place when the cable is pulled. If the plug or socket fails catastrophically, the earth pin will be the last to pull loose.

Have you SEEN the price of pitchforks now?!? How the hell are peasants supposed to afford one?

It’s worth noting that this is talking about plug in solar, so would be at standard mains voltage.

1kw would be around 4A in Europe, but 8A in the USA. Also, since resistive losses scale with I^2 that’s 4x the heat dumped in the walls.

At least in the UK, they tend to run 3 phase to a road, but only a single phase goes into a given house. You need to get a special hook up to get 3 phase to a domestic premise, and they don’t like doing it.

I had a chat about this with a friend who works for the national grid (UK).

Apparently the problem is keeping the grid balanced and stable. Basically, the grid struggles to react fast, so they plan ahead. Things like large scale solar can provide predictions on output. Home solar can’t.

When clouds pass over an area it can cause slumps and surges in the local grid. The more home solar, the worse it gets. The current grid is designed to work top down, with predictable changes in demand. It needs upgrading to deal with large scale bidirectional flows.

The plug in units are (potentially) even more ropey. If used properly, they are no worse than normal home solar. Unfortunately, being cheaper, there are worries over the microinverters not shutting down. Either due to the manufacturer cheaping out, or turning on an “off grid” mode.

There are also worries about overloading household circuits. Back feeding bypasses the household circuit breakers and RCDs. They could overload wall wiring and cause fires, or stop an RCD tripping, allowing for a person to be shocked.

I don’t know how much this would apply to the American Grid, but I would imagine it would be worse. Your grid is older and larger. You also use 120VAC which makes the current overload issue a lot worse.

I fully agree. The only thing to add is that a lot of the economic issues are due to the type of reactors used. The new designs could be a lot more economical. Unfortunately they get buried under the same red tape as the old bomb factory designs.

I suspect we won’t see a lot of them used until after fusion power renders them redundant.

Nuclear should be part of the solution. Unfortunately, most older plants are bomb factories, that happen to make power. No-one built the newer safe designs, till China got hold of the aborted UK designs.

At this point, most of the west doesn’t have the skilled personnel left to spin nuclear up quickly. We also no longer have the time to deal with building nuclear, as part of the near term solution to climate change.

Oi, we have awesome food in the UK! (We also have a LOT of complete crap too)

They also likely have detailed plans and supplies set up for exactly this sort of action. It will be less “teenager with an AK” and more competent, trained soldiers fighting to protect his homeland from invaders.

It perplexed me quite a lot. I think it was the only way he could mentally maintain his worldview.

Dealing with that mindset is exhausting. I try and keep an open mind. Unfortunately it’s possible to have it so open your brain falls out.

I lost a good friend a similar way. He insisted there was a global conspiracy to suppress “free energy” (over unity generators), among other things.

My background allowed me to personally prove some of his arguments wrong from almost first principles. He then accused me of personally being part of the conspiracy. At that point I concluded he was a lost cause and parted ways.

Most of his “evidence” was in YouTube videos. I went through a couple. It mostly had the build-up, explanation, consequences, and conclusions. It missed any actual evidence. It’s amazing how someone can fill 2 hours with nothing of substance.

The UK used submarines during the Falklands war.

The decision was made to sink an Argentinian warship. Critically, they didn’t attack the escort ship. They left it to recover the sailors. Apparently it horrified the British command when it ran, leaving sailors in the water.

A simple radio message “Move and we will sink you. Take no offensive actions and we will give you 5 minutes to launch lifeboats first.” Hell, even a sonar ping would have given them half a chance.

You at least do what you can to give them a fighting chance.

A radio message would have at least let them abandon ship in a (semi) orderly manner. Hell, even a solar ping would have got them into life jackets.

Normally, a sub wouldn’t risk this. They knew in advance, however, that the ship was not currently armed.