Diminished maybe, but not all that much.

I think we can reasonably assume that if there's a huge blackout, it won't last forever. A lot of smart people will work hard on getting things up and running again. A few years ago in the USA it lasted for a bit longer, what was it, a week or two? Recently in Spain it lasted a few days. But all those power stations and power grid operators don't just shrug and go home. So getting through those days is probably all it takes for any reasonably realistic scenario.

And you can build things up piecewise. I've got my solar now. The next thing will be a battery. Once I have that, I can think about an electric car.

I've generally preferred to pay people a salary, when reasonable to do so.

I hire(d) people (I still employ some people directly) to do a job. So long as the job was done properly, I'm not a big stickler when it comes to spending time at work. If the job can be done in 4 days, so be it. My concern is that the work is done on time and properly. It's also not important to me how they did the work, so long as it was done right.

I'm all for a 4 hour work week, so long as their wages match what they'd make for a 40 hour work week. Yes, minimum wage is too low. Then again, I'd never consider paying someone the least amount I could pay them by law. That's just a kick in the proverbial nuts and pretty damned degrading. "I'd pay you less, but the law won't allow it."

My house was built before CAT6 came out. It should be easy to upgrade as everything runs through in-wall conduit. I figured I'd do that for future-proofing.

I've not really seen a need to upgrade. It works well enough and there are jacks in most rooms. I also don't have the bandwidth to make it matter much, though fiber will be here before too long. Upgrading then may matter. (Fiber wasn't going to come up my road, but I contacted the company and a couple of neighbors and I will pay for the fiber to be run.)

Cat5e should still be fine. I'm not going to bother paying for full GB service, as I don't need that much bandwidth. I'll be fine with half of that and CAT5e should be viable.

This is about the 'inadequate' comment you made.

I could see it being inadequate for some people. As for me, it's still holding up and still fit for purpose. I've lived in a bandwidth-impoverished area for going on two decades. So, my needs, perhaps better said expectations, are different. I don't even see a reason to go full boar on the GB speeds. As I am technically a business, they say I can request even higher speeds. I'm simply not interested in that.

Then again... We'll see how I feel after a few months. I may end up wanting to splurge and increase my speeds. It could happen.

You'd think so, but you won't feel a thing. You won't have to adjust your diet because you'll naturally lose weight. Then, well, you won't even suffer a headache, a toothache, a stubbed toe, or any of those other painful things.

Hmm... This needs a pithy statement that can be summed up enough to fit on a bumper sticker.

I dunno... I'm a doctor and if you're dead then you're in perfect health. You no longer have any ailments of any kind. You're not going to catch any diseases.

Just to be clear, I'm not a medical doctor. I don't even play a medical doctor on TV. But, I am a doctor - though I don't tend to use the honorary, for a variety of reasons.

As mentioned elsewhere, per 100,000 cars, ICE powered vehicles catch fire more often than EVs.

This may be of interest, so I'll share it...

https://core.verisk.com/Insigh...

This doesn't mean that EV fires aren't important, it's just that they seem to happen less often (per 100,000 cars) than ICE-powered vehicles. There are other citations, some newer, but I just grabbed the first one from Google.

EV fires still suck to get under control, especially for small volunteer fire departments without a lot of money to upgrade what they have. EV fires still release some pretty awful stuff - but so don't ICE-powered vehicles.

I've recently started looking at my power consumption on a 15-minute graph, and it turns out that power usage isn't all that much less during the night. In fact, at times it is higher because all the lights are turned up. But even at night, there's the fridge and freezer, the house electronics, security cameras, etc.

Turns out the stuff I need for work - a notebook and an external screen - barely register.

Yes, and different inverters. I've got a very small solar array, and the micro-inverter on it doesn't even work if it can't find the main power grid to sync to.

A battery will get you over some power grid outage, but not totally off-grid.

You are totally wrong.

I've installed a really small solar array and on sunny days I produce more electricity than I use. I'm sure it'll be a lot less in winter. BUT - I have a wood-burning heater which needs only a bit of electrical power for its control system. I'm pretty sure I can produce enough of that even in winter. So in theory, with the addition of a battery to cover the night, I could survive even if the power grid went down for an extended time.

Solar as a provider of independence doesn't mean everything needs to run on solar. Sometimes, it's just an enabler for another system.

So, in a nutshell, AI runs the risk of creating unrealistic relationship expectations and simulate perfection? No way. That's a completely new thing in the world. Romance novels, movies, gold diggers or marriage swindlers or just, frankly, a whole lot of ordinary people into "presenting themselves" in order to "score" a good catch, rather than being authentic and looking for a good match - I'm sure all of these things are hypothetical, don't already do essentially the same thing just with a lot less processing power, and cause the same issues.

But hey, this one has "AI" in it, so hype!

For better or worse, Nissan's are often sold (here in the US) to people with poor credit. No, I do not know all the details. I suspect Google knows, but that's the perception. The end result of this is that they're often in horrible condition and driven by drivers who did not care.

And no, it's not a 'classist' thing. I'm sure there's some confirmation bias but they're frequently in horrible condition, to the point of being unsafe. Then, of course, there are the drivers who have less care about their driving habits. Again, that could be some confirmation bias going on, but that's generally why there's a negative view here in the US.

One of my favorite vehicles was a pickup truck that I owned a long time ago. It was just called 'Nissan'. The side helpfully said, 'Pickup'. It was just 2WD but went anywhere I asked of it. The inline 6 cyl engine was amazingly reliable. The body was less reliable and rust was the eventual killer of the truck - but it was already in poor condition when I bought it.

I'm reminded of Archaeology grad students. I'm convinced they get the worst treatment.

They are quite literally started off by shoveling dirt. Well, that's if they don't start by sifting dirt, but that's usually a volunteer task on a popular dig site.

Over their scholastic career, they'll shovel literal tons of dirt. They'll do more of that after they graduate but at least they have grad students to work down to the good stuff.

Couple this with the goal of bringing manufacturing back to the US.

Yeah... Outsourcing the pollution is a good thing for us. I mean, it sucks for them but it's good for us.

You saw how they voted in real life.

They're gonna vote the same way online.