Yep, I guess that's is an idea. Thanks. Maybe I will look at that, or maybe I will just continue whining :-)

"According to Stenberg, the program has paid out over $70,000 in rewards to date."

I know this will come off a whiny, because I guess it is, but how the hell did an open source project like curl manage to get $70k to pay out for these things. I ask from the perspective of someone who have been running unixODBC for the last 20 years, and maybe I am wondering where you apply.

1 ltr of petrol produces 2.68kg of carbon dioxide

https://www.driverknowledgetests.com/resources/why-does-burning-1-litre-of-fuel-create-over-2kg-of-carbon-dioxide/

lets say a car does 25 mile per gallon = 25 / 4.546 = 5.5 miles per ltr

10,000 miles a year (as a guess) = 10000/5.5 ltr = 1818 ltr a year

so that's 1818 * 2.68kg = 4872kg = 4.8 tonnes = 5360 ton

"How can you collect royalties on something you don't own"

Though a legal agreement I assume. The same way Porsche was paid royalties by VW for decades for the beetle.

"Computer languages are just like any other language"

I strongly disagree with this. The fact that you said this makes me suspect you are not a programmer.

Its called a money shift for a reason. But assuming a manual gearbox, no reason to change down, just press the clutch, shift to neutral and let the engine run against its limiter while the car slows down.

"An opinionated person with a whiteboard and an audience is vastly better than somebody writing long text diatribes describing the nuances of a position. It doesn't work the same. It's too easy for people in disagreement to stay silent."

The problem with that statement is you seem to be assuming that the opinion and whiteboard method is finding the optimum solution, it may just be a case of the biggest mouth wins and the rest just go along for a easy ride. I don't know either if its best of course, but neither do you.

"and I can absolutely say that in my experience productivity has tanked."

After 40 years of coding I could agree with that, but other than "get off my lawn", I would point the finger at the thought that the number of good developers have stayed constant, but the number of actual developers have increased as tools and languages have made it possible to call yourself a developer with less actual ability.

2. May be true for "most" for some value of most, but for the UK

The current population of U.K. in 2023 is 67,736,802

Number of British citizens with valid passport: 49,981,699

So that looks like 73%

"The problem was that I had enough traction to steer, or to brake, but not both."

You are also ignoring trail breaking. applying the brake lightly will cause weight transfer that will increase the available steering traction not reduce it.

I do understand the problem you are wanting to pose, but I am going out of my way to not bother to answer it because while you may ask the question in the way you are asking it, both I and the real universe are making efforts to ignore it. Maybe a better question is what is wrong with my question such that the universe is not allowing it to generate an explanation of how inertia occurs. i.e. How does your hypothetical universe differ from the real one.

"That's the point - which one?"

The one that shows Coriolis on its surface. This can be observed on one and not on the other, this is not altered by the fact there is no way by just observing ball a from ball b and vice-versa to determine which has angular momentum. They could both be rotating at the same speed in the same direction, so would appear to be stationary wrt the other, but you could still observe the effect of revolution on the surface.

"There's no fixed frame of reference, each of them has exactly the same claim to being the setpoint."

That may or may not be the case, but I don't see why it matters what they claim, the fact is one ball in your situation has more angular momentum that the other.

Without being picky, how do you cause one of the balls to rotate in a universe that only contains the two balls?

"why is one ball's frame of reference holier than the other and serves as a reference for inertia in the first place"

Because at some point in the past energy was added to the rotating ball to give it angular momentum, that's what is different between the two balls. The fact that that the car I travel in can pass a tree and the tree moves in one direction and with respect to the tree the car moves in the other direction, to get into that state one of them was accelerated and the other not. Doesn't matter if there is no other object in the universe that the tree and the car, one of them contains kinetic energy that the other does not. Doesn't it seem to me, create any extra magic by applying a GR descriptions to the car and the tree. No more so your balls.

"Why not? How would you determine that it's your ball that's rotating?"

You would observe what forces are experience by objects on different point on the surface of the ball.

"Rotating with respect to what"

It doesn't matter with respect to anything, as I suggested by the equivalence to being inside a rotating cylinder.

In your system, the initial observation will make it seem as if the other ball was rotating, but further observation on the ball would show that there was a rotation taking place on the ball you were on.

Your suggestion that the 'ball of jelly would get "thicker" at its equator and flatter at its poles' indicates that there are forces acting on the rotating ball, those forces can be observed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_force

s/same was/same way/g