There was an episode of Question Time (a QA session with politicians and the public), and a woman said, on national TV, that she voted for Brexit because of bendy bananas.

Bendy bananas is one of the oldest, most frequently debunked myths about the EU. The claim is there is a crazy EU law that costs retailers money, regulating the curvature of bananas. There are actually rules about bananas... But they were written by the UK. They became a de facto standard, and the EU adopted them FROM US.

The level of ignorance was headache inducing. People knew less than nothing about the EU - what they did know was mostly lies, negative knowledge.

We won't get the old deal back, but I see that as a benefit. As for the Euro, I'd join but the reality is that the requirement to join is not at all enforced. If a country does nothing to actually adopt it, nothing happens. Several other countries haven't bothered.

It would be a huge coup if we came back.

I think what happened to the UK, socially and economically, should be enough to deter anyone else from making the same mistake.

We are about to find out if I'm right, as Switzerland votes on a population cap that would screw up their relationship with the EU. They are not in the EU, but they have adopted some of it, like freedom of movement.

It all depends on what the warranty is. IIRC VW limit the number of lifetime kWh you can use for this, and then the car just refuses to do it anymore.

If you don't drive the car regularly it might actually help to cycle the battery a bit regularly. Also, not all cycles are equal - 70-60-70% is not the same as 100-90-100, and not 1/6th of 80-20-80.

It also depends how much you get paid for it. The battery will probably outlast the car anyway, so it might be worth doing to extract more value from your asset.

Come on, one of the big draws of Linux is how easy it is to install and update your software. "Oh we never said it wasn't going to fuck your system up with malware" deserves a Powny prize.

I'm just surprised this didn't happen earlier, and I'm someone who likes these software repos.

The official independent stats from the government, provided by the Office for Budget Responsibility, say that the UK is at least 4% worse off (in terms of GDP) than it otherwise would have been. Maybe 8% worse off.

While there have been a few economic indicators in the UK that performed okay against the rest of the EU at one time or another, the EU is made up of 27 member states, some of which are still coming up to Western European levels, and of course many of those indicators only really show that the very wealthy and big corporations have done well, not the average Brit. Inequality has been increasing in the UK.

Inequality is the biggest problem in the UK. Most of the problems blamed on immigrants are really down to inequality. Not just an unfair distribution of the tax burden, but things like foreign companies buying and asset stripping essential services. Themes Water is the poster child for that. Bought, loaded up with debt, billions and billions taken out of it in dividends and bonuses, and now it's pumping large amounts of shit into our rivers and demanding hefty bill increases to avoid bankruptcy. The government can't just let them fail because people need water to live.

It's not even new, it's just the latest in a long list of ways that we sold everything of value to foreign companies. North Sea oil should have been our sovereign wealth fund, that would have paid off the pension crisis and funded our healthcare, but instead most of the profit went into private hands.

Brexit only ensured that the EU's dislike of monopolies and plundering the economy didn't restrain them.

This is true. The "legitimate concerns" are legitimate, e.g. availability of housing, but they are targeting the wrong people. It's the billionaire fucks who told them to commit brexicide that are causing the problems, not immigrants.

The worst part is that even after it was revealed that Farage got 5 million quid for delivering Brexit, these muppets don't seem to have realized that it's just more evidence he isn't working in their interests. He's working for the billionaires who have made him fabulously wealthy, and they aren't paying him because it's good for the plebs they have been exploiting all these years.

We tried a kamikaze Brexit, it didn't work. Let's hard a Hard Remain instead. Shengen, metric, the Euro, all of it.

It worked out really well for Ireland, it could do for us too.

Macs are competitive for the base spec and if you don't care about upgrades, and if you are fine running MacOS or one Linux distro.

Thinkpads are usually a better option, especially when you want a decent amount of RAM. Large choice of operating systems, at least the SSD and radios can usually be upgraded, and Lenovo support in terms of maintenance manuals and user replaceable spare parts is second to none. You also have more configuration options, e.g. mine has an OLED screen and it's amazing. Better keyboards too.

The touch screen makes the machine thicker and heavier, and reduces the visual quality of the screen (since it's an additional layer over it).

Don't worry though, Apple will sell you a $500 dumbbell to strengthen up your arm.

Not to mention that some of the franchises we love are going to be wrecked by this. Star Trek, for example. Whatever you think of the current crop of shows, this merger isn't likely to deliver good outcomes.

Some people are already trying to have robots controlled remotely by people where labour is cheap. They don't work very well, but will get better.

Cheap medicines was what patents and regulatory capture were supposed to prevent, but for stuff like cancer it's worth the patient just going to a better country for treatment, and it's hopefully a one-off so higher prices back home don't matter.

World population is levelling off around 11-12bn, which is sustainable with modern farming methods. The main reason it continues to grow is increased lifespan, so there are more generations alive at once.