Welcome to the future! 🤢

I initially thought this was a satire comment, on a satire product.

The fact it is real makes something feel fundamentally wrong with the world.

Think of it as a medieval army forming up. An army didn’t generally march straight into battle. They took the time to organise and prepare. It also acted as an opportunity to intimidate your opponents into backing down.

The protests are the army forming up. Connections are made, wills reinforced and tied to a more focused cause. In many cases, the powers that be recognise the danger this represents and back down. When they don’t, that’s when things escalate.

Protests like this are a necessary part of reaching the goal. They are a link in the chain. People don’t want violence. It will be accepted, if required, but not joyously.

Just remember, in a blunt head to head fight, the enemy would be the US military. You would need to either defeat them directly, or break their will. What would it take to cause large scale defections within the US army? Are people willing to pay that price?

Failing that, the slower, less drastic methods must be employed. It’s a war of psychological attrition, not a fist fight.

That is one of the biggest powers of a protest. It lets people know they are not alone. When we know we have backup, we are a lot more willing to act. If enough people act together, even giants fall.

Unfortunately, that’s not the type that counts. It’s the government backed/condoned that matters. The sort that even fox news would struggle to spin. The sort that should cause heads to roll within government organisations.

A few " " “lone wolves” " " can be disavowed, no matter how heinous the act they do. Unless you can tie it unambiguously to the powers that rule.

It’s a fucking shitty situation, but that’s the rules we are stuck working within. To change them, we have to win. To win, we need to play (mostly) within the rules.

Fyi, the same could also apply to left wing “lone wolves”. Without the media, it’s harder to spin, but doable. If they happen to meet up and organise at a march, that’s nothing to do with the march. 😇

Well behaved as in a wild west high noon standoff. The first to flinch, and resort to serious violence will lose a LOT of public support.

Violence now doesn’t gain much. It needs the over and support of a larger movement. It also needs to be focused, to not simply dissipate the anger.

Right now, America is getting back into the habit/flow of protesting. That alone should make an intelligent government nervous. Don’t dip the stew over their heads, until it’s good and boiling.

(And to clarify. I’m not saying to follow all rules, like good little drones. Bad behaviour just needs to be conscious and controlled)

Granted.

No wars will never end, unless you personally step in to end them. Minor skirmishes now turn into epic wars of genocidal annihilation. It’s down to you to stop them.

For random bias yes. Unfortunately, that age group are notoriously difficult to poll accurately. Without knowing how the polling was done, detecting systematic bias is difficult.

E.g. street polling on a Sunday morning, near a church, or mosque will get vastly different results to the same poll near the high street, on a Friday night.

Also relevant. https://xkcd.com/882/

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a worrying poll. Buta lot of studies like this disappear back into the noise, when studied by multiple groups.

Often it’s the shadow of violence that is most effective. A peaceful protest, that is safe enough for families etc is perfect for snowballing. Focused action and the threat of counter violence keeps the government in check.

Too violent, and the support collapsed, letting the police simply overwhelm it. Too passive, and the whole thing can be ignored.

The Irish troubles are a good example. Protests and marches showed popular support. While the Sinn Fein party provided a political face. The IRA then made sure that proper attention was paid. All 3 were required to achieve their goals.

It’s not an either/or situation.

In the (supposed) words of Al Capone

You get a lot more from a kind word and a gun than from a kind word alone.

Critically however, a gun without the kind word is also far less effective. They are like the tip and shaft of a spear. The shaft has the range, but lacks the punch. The tip has the punch, but lacks the range. Together they are far more than the sum of their parts.

In terms of protest. A peaceful protest is like the kind word. It’s a polite but forceful delivery of a message. Radical action and violence are the gun. They work best as an implied threat. The target much know that you are willing to escalate, if required.

Too much violence, and you have a riot. These can be put down with force, and have little to no public backlash. (This is what trump currently wants to happen).

Too little violence, and the protest can be safely ignored.

The perfect balance has enough to keep the government on their toes, but not so much as to drive away supporters, and burn off the anger powering things.

Currently, Trump and co are trying to goad people into over reacting and justifying an aggressive crackdown. In light of that, a message of don’t take the bait, err towards passive over violence isn’t so bad.

The seller thinks the value is net negative to them. The buyer thinks it still has a potential positive value. Both would agree to just hand it over.

Unfortunately, UK law does not allow that. Consideration must go both ways. The simplest way is to sell for the minimum reasonable amount. $1 is traditional in the US. In the UK it is £1. The other commenters link has a good writeup on the practice.

They broke from “everything is a pound” years ago. They also still do a really bad job making it clear what is no longer a pound.

There are a bunch of characteristics that, while fairly arbitrary, can’t be changed once they are locked in. The mappings from RNA to proteins are a good example. Changing it is instantly lethal to the cell involved. Others include the chirality of amino acids, and the choice of bases for DNA.

If we look at the entire tree of life, we see no deviations in these deep characteristics. This implies that they were fixed before we all split. There might have been alternative variations in the past, but none have survived to the modern day (that we have identified).

This goes double of eucaryotes (basically everything other than bacteria). The design is so unique that convergent evolution is highly unlikely to stumble into the exact same layout from 2 sources.

Kids fill you to the brim with love, and drain you of everything else.

I’ve seen too many bicycles destroyed by this over the years. People clean them off in the autumn , then wonder why the gears are rusted to hell in the spring.

I’ve some relatives who always did this to things, then complained about it. It made me a little… reactive to it.

There’s a rubber seal inside the lid that stops them leaking. The milk etc can get behind it, where normal washing won’t get. It can get funky if you don’t clean it out.

Parenting mostly isn’t that hard. You just have to keep all the proverbial plates spinning. Unfortunately there are FAR more than you expect, and you never get a break. You will miss some, then beat yourself up for missing something so simple.

You’re likely picking up on her autism. Most aspies put on a (mental) mask to interact with others. For most it’s intended to be inoffensive and keep you in the background. Greta’s is focused on her goal. She would likely prefer you hated her, but knew about her causes, than be likeable, but forgettable.

As for harmless, that’s part of the image. She’s as harmless as a friendly bull. It will happily get scratches behind the ears, but still walk straight through the wooden fence to let the cows roam free.

You likely already know, but just in case (and for any readers who don’t know).

WD40 is a water displacement compound and so acts as a degreaser and rust softener. It strips the oil and crap off a part, letting it move. It also strips the protective coating off as well. It will rust rapidly without this.

If you use WD40 you need to follow up with replacement oil, or other protection and lubricant. Without it, it will seize up again quite quickly.

It the words (slightly poorly remembered) of an old friend (in her 80’s at the time).

“You don’t ever feel like an adult. Underneath it all you’ll always be the kid, or teenager you remember. The difference is, you get better at faking being an adult. The real change is when you realise everyone else is faking it too. Suddenly your performance doesn’t seem too bad.”

As an aspie, I’ve been there, no AI required. I reached the point where I mentally prepared ‘boilerplate’ answers to questions like that. It gives me something to say, while my brain gets back up to speed, and pointed in the right direction.