Joking aside, the diagnostic criteria is basically "has some of the known symptoms, ruled out everything else". That's why House didn't like it, he thought there was always a root cause, and it looks like science may have discovered it.

The question now is, how do you undo it? Some of the damage may be permanent, but just getting the auto immune system to stop attacking the rest of the body would make a huge difference to a lot of people, and not just people with Lupus.

I know at least three companies that took the opportunity to move as much of their stock and equipment out of the UK, while EU rules were still in place, and then closed up shop here in the UK. Another ended up opening a new facility in Ireland where they re-tested stuff so it could meet EU requirements, as the new British CA mark is pretty much worthless.

Of course it cost them money, but not as much money as they would have lost by staying. And that's with the UK's newly devalued currency making out exports cheaper.

The UK also had a veto over most of the rules that the EU introduced. I don't think it ever used it. In fact, in almost every case, the UK voted for the proposed rules. It was something like under 2% that it didn't want, mostly because the EU tends to make sure everyone is happy before even having the vote - you know, how adults agree stuff.

There was a lot of misinformation about EU rules. The classic one is the "bendy banana" rule, which governs the acceptable ripeness of bananas sold there. Much hang wringing was done, but actually it was a British rule that had become a de-facto one in the rest of the EU, so they just adopted it from us.

The day after the referendum, some member of the public on TV said she was going to vote remain, but at the last moment remembered the bananas and thought "this has to stop". I think fortunately they didn't give her name, but I do sometimes wonder if she eventually realized and was ashamed of it.

The rest of the world isn't going to forget what Trump did, or the ability of the American people to elect someone like him. It's going to take a long time and a lot of work to rebuild the trust and relationships that existed before, if it is even possible.

The US is seen as politically unstable. Every 4 years there is a good chance that whatever policy was made will be reversed, whatever the priorities were will change.

Recently the French police have started slashing the boats before they set off, on the basis that it's unsafe and they are protecting the occupants.

Really the only way to resolve this issue is to have a proper integrated system to deal with people seeking asylum in Europe, but that would be politically unacceptable in the UK.

Brexit was sold as being protectionist, but it was actually the opposite. We gave up huge amounts of sovereignty.

For example, we used to control both sides of our border with France, but Brexit gave up control of the French side and sure enough the boats started coming. The French are not all that interested in policing our border for us, beyond what they can get out of any deals they made with us.

On rule making too, we are now pretty much obliged to accept whatever the EU does, because we are too small to make big demands of our own. Every time we diverge from what the EU does, it damages our economy even more. Farming is a good example. Brexit was supposed to help our farmers, but it's shafted them with extra red tape and costs when they want to export. Some naive fantasists thought we would become self sufficient and eat British grown food, but it's not really to our tastes and many can't afford the price rises that would come with it.

So don't worry, the next protectionist will argue that Brexit wasn't done right and their version will somehow not be a total disaster.

True. I wonder how bad that would be. How much stuff would get kicked up with enough delta V to enter a long duration orbit

Ah yes, for loans. But really that data should have been kept separate, and deleted as soon as no longer needed. If this happened to anyone in a GDPR country, that will be a factor because there is an obligation to do that kind of thing as a matter of course.

They were careful to separate out the damage done by COVID. While the UK was in the EU for 4 of those years, the damage was done the moment the referendum was decided. The Pound fell hard, investment fell, companies started planning their exit strategies.

Arguably some of the COVID damage can be attributed to Brexit as well. If we hadn't voted for it in 2016, it seems unlikely that Boris Johnson would have become Prime Minister in 2019, and then botched the COVID response so badly. His mismanagement and purging of the last few decent Tories from his party contributed to the economic damage, the deaths, the long term health problems, and of course the massive amount of fraud and theft by members of his party and their friends. Everything from dodgy PPE, to Test & Trace that didn't work.

What feature would necessitate the owner giving them their driving licence details? All I needed for mine was an email address and the car's VIN.

Oh I didn't say it wasn't really, really bad, just that the main concern with Kessler Syndrome is that it is extremely difficult to clean up.

A lot of her climate action is based around justice. The big emitters are causing huge problems for people in the developing world. The yearly CO2 output of the EU or US is bigger than the total all-time emissions of many African nations, for example.

So naturally, other justice issues like genocide are of interest to her. There is also the fact that Israel is stealing Palestinian oil.

I'm okay with it being buried deep in the settings. It needs to be harder than just a checkbox, because bitter experience has shown that otherwise people just don't install updates. Then they get hacked and become part of a botnet that attacks you.

I can live with an extremely mild annoyance if it means a huge reduction in exploits of people's browsers.

No, the CCP's goal was to leapfrog everyone else. Instead of developing combustion engine tech and hybrids in an attempt to catch up, they went all-in on batteries and EVs. It paid off, they are now years ahead and sustaining that lead.

How is competing hard not operating in good faith? Did the US not bail out its own auto industry multiple times, and subsidize the transition to EVs? Wasn't Tesla part of a government investment scheme?

We should thank China for doing that which we apparently couldn't, but which the world needs. They advanced battery tech rapidly and accelerated the transition away from fossil fuels.