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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: January 7th, 2024

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  • 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.








  • Fused plugs still have a big advantage.

    The amperage can be specific to the device.

    We do mandate all circuits have RCD/GFCI now, but we’re not taking away fuses in plugs.

    If a lamp starts drawing too much current for its wire, it might be on a 20A breaker. It should have a 1A fuse in the plug.

    Fuses on the sockets would mean either specific sockets and circuits for low, medium, and high power devices or a loss of specificity. In fact there are 5 levels, so 5 different levels to replicate with your system.

    https://www.stevensonplumbing.co.uk/bs1362-fuses.html

    For a short or earth the RCD trips. If more goes out on the live than returns to the neutral the RCD trips. If the current goes high but returns correctly to the neutral, the RCD does nothing, the fuse in the plug breaks.

    Fuses are an inch by a quarter inch.

    Fuses and plugs could be made smaller but to be honest the pins and wires need to be able to take 13A.

    Most of the bulk is about the length of the pins. Making it mechanically safe so the earth connects before the live, making it difficult to accidentally pull out the wall, and making sure no live connection is contactable when partly outside the wall.

    We have low power travel adapters for low power devices that fold away bits they don’t need. Or separate onto pieces.

    I think we’re good. Plugs are still smaller than AC-DC adapters we use all the time. Calling the bulky is a bit of a stretch. They’re aren’t bulky, even compared to a modern phone charger.





  • Exactly.

    People were simultaneously told different things by different people on what would happen of the country voted leave. A lot of it obviously false even at the time.

    People might have known what they were voting for. But what they were voting for had no basis on what the government would actually do.

    Then we had the prime minister who held the referendum resign.

    A new prime minister is chosen in a private election amongst members of the conservative party (about 100,000 votes will do it normally but no one actually runs against them). This becomes a theme.

    There is legislation passed which essentially puts a clock on the process. If nothing passes we’d just revoke laws and break treaties.

    This was meant to scare the EU into giving us what we wanted. The EU was not overly concerned.

    The government put some very shoddy legislation together. We got a pretty poor deal from the EU, well we were pretty desperate.

    The government couldn’t pass that legislation

    We had an election for a new government

    The government lost seats and lost their majority

    The government then joined with a religious extremist party in Northern Ireland to give them a majority.

    The shoddy legislation becomes not only shoddy but also more extreme, It still can’t pass.

    The prime minister is ousted by their own party.

    We get a new prime minister.

    They still haven’t decided on the legislation but they tell everyone what they want to hear.

    We have an election

    The government gets a big working majority

    The shoddy extreme legislation, which we now know from first hand accounts the prime minister didn’t understand, still can’t pass.

    The government literally breaks the law and closes parliament illegally to try and run the clock closer to the point where we take a bonfire to massive ammous of legislation.

    The government are then forced back into the house by the courts

    Eventually at the last moment a deal is passed. It’s really bad for the UK economy, and the UK in general.

    The UK leaves the EU. Northern Ireland doesn’t. Well it sort of does.

    COVID and Another 2 prime ministers later and Brexit deals are still being negotiated.

    Essentially he EU has everything it needs. It’s protected the interests of bordering nations like the Republic of Ireland and France. The UK has increased friction on trade, labour issues.

    The current big issue is that France no longer helps us stop people crossing the channel. That was an EU agreement. So our government, now spends it’s time and energy trying to deport people to Rwanda, breaking the entirely separate European Convention on Human Rights Churchill’s government basically wrote and passed after the second world war.

    It’s worth noting that this government has had a vote share of 36.1% pre referendum in 2015 36.9% post referendum in 2017 42.4% post deadlock in 2019 (with the opposition getting 40%)

    The conservative party got that lock in 2019 on 55% of the seats with 42.4% of the vote

    Since then they’ve rotated people in and out of government to essentially do the bidding of the one who pays the most into their individual campaign funds against each other.

    The government refuse to allow an election even while they’re essentially changing constantly.

    We haven’t really got democracy in this country. We disenfranchise a lot of people through our electoral system by design. We concentrate power to a minority.

    It’s a mess.





  • All it is is whether a compound word is common enough.

    It starts in speech when the words are repeated next to each other often enough they start being thought of as one word. But can’t be shortened.

    If, in context, every time we said farmer we ended up saying dirt farmer. It would become compound. But in reality we’d just end up saying “farmer” when the context makes it clear. You’ll see this in writing about farming all the time, initially stating the type of farmer then just saying farmer.

    Flag pole started out separately, but in some conversations it would become one object. Every time we talked about the flag pole it would be one word, flagpole. But saying just “pole” would be ambiguous. There are other poles around.

    It trends towards shortness, if context allows us to drop a word altogether we will, if it doesn’t it gets compounded abbreviated.

    No formal rule for this at all, but that’s the way it happens. People try to say things more efficiently without confusing meaning.