It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated.

For instance, at the very moment that Arthur said, ‘I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle,’ a freak wormhole opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried his words far far back in time across almost infinite reaches of space to a distant galaxy where strange and warlike beings were poised on the brink of a frightful interstellar battle.

The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time.

A dreadful silence fell across the conference table as the commander of the Vl’hurgs, resplendent in his black jewelled battle shorts, gazed levelly at the G’Gugvuntt leader squatting opposite him in a cloud of green sweet-smelling steam, and, with a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to unleash electric death at his single word of command, challenged the vile creature to take back what it had said about his mother.

The creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapour, and at that very moment the words, ‘I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle’ drifted across the conference table.

Unfortunately, in the Vl’hurg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war for centuries.

Eventually, of course, after their galaxy had been decimated over a few thousand years, it was realised that the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake, and so the two opposing battle fleets settled their few remaining differences in order to launch a joint attack on our own galaxy—now positively identified as the source of the offending remark.

For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across—which happened to be Earth—where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.

Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but that we are powerless to prevent it.

‘It’s just life,’ they say.

Douglas Adams, The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter 31.

Ah, yes, green Ubuntu. Nice.

It’s not? Damn. The German box literally says “der original Kinofilm” on each box.

Wondering why this doesn’t mention the theatrical DVD release… was there anything wrong with that (except the resolution, obviously)?

Not enough time passed yet, obviously.

Cetacean Ops ❤️

Who does this! :'(

Who does… what? What am I missing here? Somebody took some butter… weren’t they allowed to? Was it yours and they used some without asking? I’m really lost.

Why would you offer a nuanced point of view if people just want to shit on the system?

Okay, so that maybe was a bit imprecise… I had heard that argument before, but essentially only from people who weren’t into the topic really. I was just curious if there was a serious source for that. Like, more serious than uncle Günther who flies a national flag in his garden.

But the guardian article mentions the points but comes to exactly the expected conclusion:

The data we have leaves little doubt that resource extraction will be significantly lower for electric cars compared with their petrol or diesel equivalents as recycling increases.

Just like replacing all cars.

I keep hearing this and the opposite

I never heard the opposite. Sources?

EV adoption can’t happen in a second. If more EVs are sold, countries can just expand grids and charging networks with it.

China tomorrow: “Mongolia is part of China”

Who doesn’t like overly specific statements?

It’s a distributed database, of course.

That’s… a weird sentence? That “until” at the beginning doesn’t really work, does it?

My son (9) recently started reading “worst week ever” which is said to be similar. It relies a lot on poop jokes, so there’s that, but hey, he’s literally rolling on the floor laughing. What I’ve read so far also seemed like the story was kind of fine. Main character runs from one embarrassing situation into the next, but so far nobody in the story, especially not the main character, seems to be a genuinely bad person, which I like a lot.

Considering that the French wanted a plane that could deliver nukes from an aircraft carrier and the Germans wanted a fast fighter jet, just making them two separate planes that merely rely on the same interfaces where appropriate might not be such a bad idea.

The trouble is at least in my country the infrastructure is just not there

When I read that I just assumed you’d live in some developing country or an extremely sparsely populated one like Canada.

But… You live in the UK?

Sorry, but can’t relate. Had that feeling for the first few trips until the first one where we drove so much more efficiently that we deliberately did not take the first planned stop. I rode shotgun, so I then looked for alternative spots to charge, just to see that there are so many in my country that having planned those routes in the first place literally doesn’t make sense.

Since then we just drive. Once we get below 50 km remaining range, we check some map app for the next charger. Like we did with gas stations.

Also, coming from practicality… it’s just so nice not to have to use gas stations. Like, you usually just always start whatever you do with a full battery because you just charge it overnight. No gas stops on my commute is quite practical.