VLC

Exceptions are possible. Money isn’t everything for everyone.

If you look at the graph, 0GW.

It’s unlikely that the batteries stored power for several days. Highly likely that abundance of solar is the source.

“On 31 December 2009, rather than being fully privatised, the mint ceased to be an executive agency and its assets were vested in a limited company, Royal Mint Ltd. The owner of the new company became The Royal Mint trading fund, which itself continued to be owned by HM Treasury. As its sole shareholder, the mint pays an annual dividend of £4 million to the Treasury, with the remaining profits being reinvested into the mint.[58] In 2015, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced a £20 billion privatisation drive to raise funds, with the Royal Mint being up for sale alongside other institutions including the Met Office and Companies House.[55]”

“Then in 2016, the mint announced plans for Royal Mint Gold (RMG), a digital gold currency that uses blockchain to trade and invest in gold. Operated by CME Group, the technology is to be[out of date?] created by technology companies AlphaPoint and BitGo.[69]”

Bring it back into public ownership. It’s been partially privatised and the vultures are extracting what they can.

It’s not completely nonsensical for the government to lose a small margy on making currency. It’s useful and the harder it is to counterfeit the better.

But both “New Labour” and the Conservatives have a lot to answer for when it comes to our national assets being lost.

Is the internet scarier?

Or is it just millennials and “internet natives” having kids and more of them knowing better what the internet actually is.

I tell people to imagine a public place with everyone in it, the majority wearing masks or costumes. With constantly recording surveillance. Do you take off your mask.

Sure the mask is not perfect protection, and there are areas off to the side where people seem to not be wearing masks. But go ahead and choose a way to keep your kids safe.

It would also negate the point of the legislation that means they have to accept stamps in the first place.

You should not have to visit a post office in person or online to post a letter.

There are letter boxes in walking distance. If you’ve bought a book of stamps everything you need is in your desk.

That’s the system we have and it would never be designed by a business that way. But it’s a business that’s taken on that system alongside the I infrastructure for it.

If you genuinely depend on the post accessibility to it is important. It could be modernised but it was working before, modernisation and cost saving are not the same thing.

Fl. Oz are actually nothing to do with weight. They are volume.

For each fluid oz. use 30 ml

It’s only approximate but the official measurements for nutrition actually do it in the US so it’s not a real unit anyway anymore.

Stamps no longer have a face value. They are 1st or second class.

As they put up the price each year it’s becoming common to buy stamps before the price rise and sell them after.

The margin on the last rise was ~13% on 2nd class stamps, 8% on first class stamps.

13% has been roughly the average every year since 2005.

So you can absolutely buy stamps at less than “face value”. Someone who bought them 4 years ago could easily give you a 20% discount and still make a profit.

As stamps are not allowed to expire (or have to be replaced if they do) this is a safe investment.

Royal mail have encouraged this to inflate sales in the short term and are suffering from those valid stamps still being available now with no further revenue.

Taking the face value off stamps is what’s caused this problem.

There was never an investment opportunity in buying a 90p stamp that was still worth 90p postage years later.

But buying 1000 2nd class stamps that are always worth 2nd class postage has been an inflation beating purchase.

Or they go close to bust and get renationalised.

If Labour are smart about it they’ll keep the USO in place and when it’s shown the business isn’t profitable take the assets back into public hands at a reasonable price.

The key problem with the new stamps is there’s no way for someone to check the validity themselves.

It’s also just a barcode, so a fake stamp that gets used with that barcode first doesn’t get stopped and the legitimate one does.

There have definitely been some batches where the barcodes have leaked.

Honestly, Zoom just has a hilariously high frequency of vulnerabilities being discovered.

Let’s set the sentence for executing an innocent man to, death.

The first barrier to the death penalty is to make sure verdicts are right 100% of the time.

After that you can begin the debate about **whether it’s moral at all.

Proportional representation does give a minority voice to these people.

It’s the cost of fairness and it is useful to demonstrate minority views are disregarded for no reason other than because they’re the minority.

How’s that FPTP election going? Nice and stable, no extremists likely to overthrow democracy or anything?

You can’t stop a genocide with reason, to commit a genocide you have to dehumanise people, you’re beyond reason.

The only response to genocide is materially affecting the perpetrators. The time for diplomacy stops at atrocities.

Don’t talk to Likud’s supporters about anything. Defund and boycott the country until Likud is not in power.

That requires speaking to the international community and especially American voters to see what effect they can have on the current president.

There are sandwich artists and sanitation engineers. Everyone knows they get paid like crap.

Unfortunately “prompt engineers” seem to be getting paid small fortunes when their job is essentially using a massive amount of computing power to commit various levels of intellectual property theft they hope no one will notice.

There’s a Russian Pravda and a Ukrainian Pravda.

Both extremely partisan. Neither what I’d call reliable sources of news but you’ve probably seen propaganda from both.

Of course the Ukrainian Pravda has literally been able to print facts, unguilded, and they’ve matched what they would say as propaganda anyway so it’s appeared like a reputable news source recently.

That’s what happens when Russia genuinely does things like use chemical weapons (cs gas) banned by the Geneva convention.

(For those wondering, even though cs gas is used in riots the convention bans all gas based weapons as they target indiscriminately and could easily be mistaken for nerve agents by either side. Leading to either accidental use of nerve agents or accidental retaliation with something similarly destructive)

Or when the Russians directly hit a nuclear reactor 3 times.

Meanwhile the Russian Pravda has to manufacture its propaganda, like claiming an Islamic State attack which Islamic State issued video evidence of and claimed was somehow Ukrainian.

People will say it’s not the same as the other Boeing incidents.

They’re right, it’s not.

Unfortunately this is a new normal.

The Federal Aviation Authority has succumbed to regulatory capture. The FAA is no longer capable of protecting American’s from poor design and build quality by American manufacturers, or from poor maintenance by American airlines

The best way to stay safe is to do 2 things:

1. Choose to fly on Aircraft designed and built in Europe recently, or perhaps America before 2007.

The FAA had massive budget cuts after the financial the crisis and even though they were meant to be temporary putting the budget back has been a political football ever since. American Aircraft designed and built since those budget cuts are the problem.

2. Choose an airline that has routes in Europe and not just domestically. That means maintenance is likely to have to comply with a better funded regulatory body in addition to the FAA.

Do one and 2 and you’ll almost certainly be safe. Aircraft design and build will be as safe as we’d come to expect, so will the maintenance.

I’d prioritise 1 if you can’t do both. Even though it seems bad, a well designed aircraft losing a piece like this mid flight isn’t going to bring it down. Even if it’s not good enough to catch things like this I’d expect maintenance by domestic American Airlines to still avoid a crash, even without FAA oversight being effective. If a piece falls off, redundancy or simply the fact it’s not critical to flight means the pilot will be able to simply divert and land. Delays, not deaths.

The problem Boeing has brought in is we’re now flying modern aircraft without redundancy in key systems and structures. The FAA has allowed it. It’s the thing that’s most likely to cause fatal accidents.

Well how is it un-typical?

To be fair, the problem currently is a terrorist attack has been responded to with genocide and that’s still ongoing.

That shouldn’t be out of the news cycle, or even the top story spot.

Anything to pressure the president to actually take action to hault a genocide is worth doing. The threat he might lose an election due to low turn out is real. He can change that before November but the longer he fails to take action, the fewer voters will be willing to look past his delay and inaction.

New? Ru Paul’s drag race hit the mainstream at least 10 years ago.

It’s a problem I recognise but in my opinion those who have grown up in illegal settlements have to be the ones to move.

I do blame their parents. Their parents have knowingly broken international law and it is essentially their fault their children are legally homeless.

This is where I have sympathy for those who will genuinely experience displacement when illegal settlements are handed back, but there was a choice made by those children’s parents to put them in that situation.

Compare that with the families forcibly removed from the land in the first place with no agency or choice.

I can see that there are those who are the victim of the oppression and aggression of Zionists because they were forced to leave.

There are those who may end up facing trauma because they were forced to move there.

There are victims on both sides, the important thing is not allowing those who have perpetrated harm to continue to do so.

The illegal settlements must be returned, those who have invaded will have caused harm to their own community and will face the consequences for that.

I hope for some reciprocity from both sides like in Ireland where there is not a continuous seeking for justice and further consequences. But the initial acts of oppression and theft must be undone.

There was a war in 1967. The occupation since has been illegal.

The 1967 war itself was justified because of the actions of guerillas, not state actors. Israel was the aggressor and preemptively struck against other nations.

Israel defended itself against threats. That was justified.

But Israel then went on to punish ordinary people and civilians. It’s a pattern of behaviour that has continued since 1967. Highlight the actions of terrorists, take from the civilians. Blockade the civilians, starve the civilians. Limit food, water, medicine, other supplies.

There have been times where Israel has allowed some normalcy in the 90s. But they’ve maintained a blockade and occupation. They’ve maintained an oppression.

All justified mostly by the actions of terrorists and external states. Not the people they’ve been persecuting.

Hamas are just the latest group. Israel cannot continue to punish civilians because of the actions of terrorists.

Israel definitely want evacuated Palestinians to give up on returning home and integrate into other countries.

Forcing Palestinians to do this is one of the definitions of genocide.

If someone is suggesting that refugees become citizens of other countries of other countries automatically then that’s actually enabling a genocide.

This is the problem with looking at solutions on the small scale when the problem is large scale.

Every individual in those refugee camps would likely have a better life if they “integrated” into another country. It’s easy to say those people should get a better life.

But “integrating” into another country is also the language used to suggest the abandonment of culture and claim to their former home.

They are refugees because their homes have been under constant blockade or attack for decades. It’s time to give them their homes back.