Oh yes, because it's well known that the way you work out which police force is more professional is, you look for a single example of the one you don't like doing something terrible, and then you've proved your point. You definitely don't think about training standards, governance standards, restrictions on uses of ALPRs/ANPRs, militarisation, or, if we're going to be twatty about egregious examples of failings, fucking Uvalde. No sirree, we just do our motivated reasoning in public like a twat and consider it job done.

I implore you to spend just an hour of your time watching the very finest and best example of a police car chase you can find featuring US cops, one where they do everything by the book. And then watch a video of a good police car chase in the UK. The difference is vast. The UK police are so much more professional than the US police. But that's hardly a surprise, because the standards of recruitment and training are much higher. There's videos of European police officers asking questions and being stunned at how terrible US policing is.

Just watch this and listen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
1m15s: "At this time, I deem it proportionate to continue. The driver is in full and proper control of their vehicle."
1m30s: "It is left left left Desborough Road... it is back down to low risk as we go left left left down Mayfield Road"
2m10s: "Heavy braking, Byron Close, prepare for decamp on Byron Close"
Then look at the arrest itself at 3m. It's almost friendly -- the officer says "mate" in the middle of it, FFS.

Your police forces are systemically inadequate, and what "defund the police" ought to mean, despite the nonsense you're spouting, is the kind of transformation that led to the abolition of the irredeemable Royal Ulster Constabulary at the end of the Troubles, and its replacement with the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which has made a huge difference to the quality, culture and reception of policing there.

People like you, who think themselves so centrist and sensible, are a fucking disaster zone. You're not being centrist. Centrist is pushing for European-equivalent standards. You're simping for authoritarian inadequacy, and claiming that communities in the US must live with a patently failing status quo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

By the way, the difference in governance between the US and UK on the use of ANPR / ALPR is a striking example of just how bad the US is. The UK's ANPR operates within a nationally defined governance and audit framework, is governed primarily as a public policing capability with clear lines of institutional responsibility, has a formal national compliance and auditing architecture, and has up-front enforced rules on purpose limitation, proportionality, retention, access controls and data governance. The story that is described here just would not be possible in the UK, alarm bells would have gone off pretty much immediately. The US is a fucking backwater.

Erm, that wasn’t me, the OP. It was someone else.

As to your earlier points to me:
1. Philosophy routinely uses ordinary words in very specific ways to convey precise ideas. Think of Plato’s use of “form”, Aristotle’s use of “substance”, or Kant’s use of “transcendental”. That isn’t the same thing as arbitrarily “redefining” them. And anyway, Dummheit in German at the time connoted folly as much as stupidity. And beyond that, your own and his descriptions of the problematic conditions are nigh-on identical, so you seem to be getting hung up on his use of the word rather than recognising you seemingly share a diagnosis of a moral failing.

2. I’m specifically saying you can argue with authorities, but you’d better be sure of your grounds when you do it. And you self-evidently weren’t, because you attributed words to Bonhoeffer that weren’t his, but Cipolla’s.

In all seriousness, rather than argue more with me and get in a defensive funk, why not go read a little more about this incredible man?

https://bonhoeffersociety.org/...

A perfect encapsulaion of what Bonhoeffer was warning against. Dummheit in its purest form.

Bold of you to argue with Bonhoeffer given who he was, what he was trained in, what he did, whom he stood against, and his terrible fate. I’m not saying any of this makes him infallible, of course, but I am suggesting that you may be reading his words rather superficially. Your objection appears to me more about terms than about substance: Bonhoeffer is quite clear he’s not using “stupidity” in the simple meaning of the word, but instead to signify the surrender of independent judgement. And of course, Bonhoeffer used a German term with its own connotations, not the same as English: Dummheit.

The quote about what a stupid creature will do is not actually Bonhoeffer — it’s Cipolla in the 70s, as the source makes clear. Search for the name and you’ll see. It’s a bit confusing in how the page is laid out.

All those years ago:
“ ‘Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed — in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical — and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this thestupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily
irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.”

https://www.onthewing.org/user...

Yes, especially when you consider it’s not 90% of today’s electricity demand we should be focused on, but 90% of future demand including electrified vehicle fleet, low temp heating (buildings), etc, which is a big expansion of demand and supply cf today.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Sodium helps solve for intraday storage. It does not suddenly lower costs to the point where, eg, the UK could get through a winter lull lasting a week. But that’s ok, because that’s the last and hardest 10% of decarbonisation of electricity, and we can focus on the other 90% first, including the massive expansions needed as we electrify transport and heat.

1. Don’t expect those prices to last. Distribution costs are rising everywhere and really sharply. Go watch a Mr Global video on this
2. Californians earn more. The 10 states whose electricity is least affordable (ie costs compared to incomes) are all red states

I'll give my good-faith best guess answer. Apple has focused on exactly the question you're asking: what is this thing really for? They've figured out you can infer the user's intended use from how the user is manipulating the physical object. This is a well-trodden path for Apple. For example, taking an AirPod out signals a user intends to stop listening to the AirPod and so it automatically stops.

And the other thing Apple has focused on, coupled with this, is that there are more physical states than just open and closed; there's also an L-shaped seated mode, a tented mode, an upright L-shaped mode, etc. Apple uses the OS to infer user intent and adapt controls, panes, layouts etc in response. Apps don't have to do that for themselves, and instead can simply take advantage of the OS doing it for them. Hence the example of the user putting the device into the L-shaped seated mode while watching Netflix, and the video smoothly transitions to the upper screen while the controls smoothly transition to the lower screen.

Making this all work smoothly and intuitively is where Apple hopes to differentiate: a coherent experience that's properly thought through.

Have they succeeded? Dunno. We shall see. But they've definitely put major effort into it

It’s ordinance, not ordnance!
Ordinance = local laws
Ordnance = munitions.

In the very posh area of London called St John’s Wood, there’s a was an army barracks for many years (from 1804 to 2012. It was said to be there to act as a deterrent to anyone looking to commit crimes against the rich locals, although there’s no evidence for this). Consequently, the road running past it is named Ordnance Hill. You can buy a row house on Ordnance Hill for the cheap cheap price of just £3.8m (about 5m USD) and you get a whole 2000 square feet for that. You even get a 33 foot garden! Although that’s not really the pricey end of the spectrum, which is better represented by £10m houses on places like Acacia Road.

https://www.iangreenresidentia...

https://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-s...

Amazing to see this marked as Troll. As if it’s Trollish to note that the US has attacked Iran and is still engaged in a hot war six months down the line, with more bombings this very weekend, or Trollish to note that US OEMs have had huge bailouts repeatedly over decades. These things happened, you butthurt idiots.

It's not just that America has no cheap cars. It's that the cheap cars are unbelievably shitty by comparison with what you can get for the price. The 2026 Zeekr X starts at about 150k yuan in China, which is about 25k USD.

Look at what you get for the money: AWD, 489hp and 573Nm, 0–62mph time of 3.7 seconds, heated, ventilated and massaging front seats, a 14.6-inch central touchscreen, 24.3-inch head-up display, 13-speaker Yamaha audio system, panoramic roof, heat pump, wireless phone charging, 5G connectivity and driver-fassistance systems using cameras and radar.

You can see the global version here: https://www.zeekrlife.com/glob...

Yes, PPP means this isn't an entry level car. But even the entry-level cars have fucking fridge/heater compartments.

I think that's really focusing on only a small part of what makes Chinese cars attractive to buyers. What lots of buyers value is a large amount of amenity for the money. I mentioned this up above, but the upgraded ATTO 3 from BYD was released three years after the first version. The boot (trunk) went from 440 litres to 490 litres plus a 100 litre frunk, the rear suspension went from 4 to 5 link, the charging went from 110 to 220kW, the 0 to 60 went from 7.3 to 3.9 seconds, the range went from 261 to 316 miles, etc. This is a little compact crossover, about the size of an HR-V (the HR-V is 4.4 inches longer, but -- natch -- has a shorter wheelbase because it's not packaged as well). It's not at all fancy.

In China, there's a meme for what car buyers now expect: "Fridge, colour TV, big sofa". It sounds like a joke, till you look at what's actually available there, eg the Neta L (dual-door refrigerated/heated fridge, two 15.6-inch screens, and fancy seats for 150k yuan); the Yuan Plus, which is actually the ATTO 3 equivalent in China, which has a cooling/heating fridge, heated seats and lounge-style interior for 100k yuan); and the Dongfeng 008, which has the same for 200k yuan.

I don't know about you, but if *I* could get a car with Chinese levels of amenity, I absolutely would. I can get a Chinese car here in the UK, but frankly we get the dregs compared to what's available over there.

Here's an older example: https://youtube.com/shorts/pYW...

The irony of this is that the range, quality and value of the cars available in China to Chinese consumers vastly -- vastly -- outstrips what the Chinese OEMs export to the rest of the world. If Chinese OEMs were *really* "cheating", they'd sell many more types of car overseas, and their prices would be lower abroad than at home (which is the literal definition of dumping, by the way).

They've not progressed by cheating. They've progressed by improving their cars. Look at what BYD did with the ATTO 3 in just three years.

The old ATTO 3 had a 60.5kWh LFP Blade battery with a range of 261 miles and max 110kW charging, was front-wheel drive, produced 204PS and 310Nm, and could do 0–62mph in 7.3 seconds. It used their in-house e-Platform 3.0, with a cell-to-pack battery, had four-link rear suspension, 440 litres of boot space and no frunk. It was a competent family EV, but its charging speed, performance and packaging were relatively conventional.

By contrast, the new ATTO 3 has a 74.8kWh Blade 2 battery, 316 miles of range and 220kW charging on an 800V architecture. It moves to rear-wheel drive, with up to 449PS and 560Nm, cutting 0–62mph to 3.9 seconds. The battery is now integrated into the body structure using cell-to-body technology, the rear suspension is upgraded to a five-link setup, boot space rises to 490 litres and there is now a roughly 100-litre frunk. The car is basically the same size, but BYD has substantially upgraded the battery, charging system, drivetrain, chassis and packaging.

I loved my Renault Zoes, and they saw a big improvement in three generations, but nothing on this scale.