On a course i was once given the statistic that at 30mph 90% of pedestrians die, and at 20mph 90% live.

Now consider (from the same course) that breaking isn’t linear and most stopping happens at the end. So if you’re going 30 and would stop at point x during an emergency stop, then if you start an emergency stop at the same point while doing 40 you’ll reach point x doing 30.

Yeah. I don’t speed, especially in areas with pedestrians.

I don’t have a problem with the idea of a digital ID. I’ve been saying for years that it’s ridiculous that any time you want to do something even vaguely official you have to take a gas bill with you to prove your address.

What I worry about is the implementation. It seems like it’s going to be a government app that stores everything. What company is going to develop that? Where’s the data going to be stored and how? What vulnerabilities does it have, and how has this been tested? Is biometric data going to be stored anywhere? etc.

If they were to let me store my ID in my phone’s built-in wallet, then I’m happy. I know the security and I’m content that my data is safe and recoverable.

But it doesn’t seem like that’s something that will be possible. So I’m going to object strongly.

If you like facts then you should know that “Autist” Is a rather controversial term in the autistic community, with many finding it dehumanising, and with a significant proportion of those who use it themselves doing so to “reclaim” it in an n-word-like “it’s okay when i say it, but not when you say it” way.

And if you really do have an autistic daughter, then you might want to do some internal reflection on why you think being “surrounded by […] autists” Is negative enough to use as an insult. Those kinds of attitudes can have negative impacts on children and can lead to internalised ableism. And if it’s not the kind of attitude you would show around her, then it’s worth asking yourself why not.

Outer Wilds. Easily the most profoundly moving experience I’ve ever had from playing a video game. And it does such a good job of starting off - and even remaining, to a degree - a fun, light-hearted story.

If there’s anybody reading this who’s interested in the game, let me say a couple of things.

1. Go in as spoiler-free as possible. The entire progression system is based on acquiring knowledge, and a lot of the power of the game comes from discovering everything for yourself, in your own way.

2. Don’t treat it like a game. Instead put yourselves in the shoes of your character. See something that you think looks cool? Go and look at it. Don’t think “well, I should probably finish this area first…” Explore. Learn. Decide for yourself what your priority is.

Loads of games call themselves open world, but are actually quite on rails. One trigger at the beginning of the game aside, Outer Wilds really is open world. One reason why watching other people play it is so much fun is that everybody really does have a completely different experience while playing it. One person will do something as the first thing they do, then someone else will do the same thing when they’re 80% of the way through. And the game is so well-designed that both ways is equally rewarding.

Sorry, I tend to evangelise for this game a lot because it is, as I said above, a genuinely profound and moving experience.

Yes, i was explaining why the same isn’t true in the UK, but that that also doesn’t mean that we can just sit back and relax like it isn’t a possibility down the road

Brexit isn‘t really relevant to the UK. ATM Reform, the most far-right party, is polling very well. As in „would become the ruling party if an election were called today“ well. They‘re also starting to get defectors from the hertofore bigger right-wing party (whose leader literally just said at the party conference that the UK should have it‘s own ICE squads doing what the US one is).

Some of the fearmongering is overwrought - especially the characterisation of Labour as being equivalent because they are acting in some utterly reprehesible ways in a stupid and doomed effort to court Reform voters - but it‘s a threat that should be taken seriously.

The good news is that the next election is 4 years away. If Trump fails in that time, or if the US gets so unahamdedly fascist that even the most denialist person can‘t deny it and it seriously harms the US on the international stage, then perhaps the British right-wing politicians will fall out of love with trying to ape Trump and the punters will see the warning signs and quietly shift back leftwards (or will crawl back in their holes in an atmosphere of „actually it isn‘t okay to say that out loud“).

I think also we‘ll need the Your party to definitively collapse so as not to split the vote on the left and for Starmer himself to resign and someone like Andy Burnham to take over (although he‘s just flubbed that one) in order to make Labour electable again.

Or there‘s the other option of Labour actually introducing something like proportional representation before the next election and thereby limiting the power of a party like Reform.

Point is, there are ways out of this mess, and there‘s time for it to happen. And we‘re definitely not where the US is, and the idea of a NeoNazi coalition seems far-fetched even under a potential Farage leadership. But at the same time, there is definitely cause for serious concern here in the UK, because there are definitely those in power or near power who would very much like to be where Trump is now.

I think they give the game away by listing being neurodivergent as a negative. A negative which is in and of itself “rude”.

“Your brain processes information differently to mine? That’s rude! Why would you deliberately annoy me like that?”

One of the hopes for a Labour government was that they would roll back the restrictions on our right to protest…

Kinda looks like if she & Emma Watson had a baby. And then that baby became a haunted waxwork.

Maybe Musk should ask them for some tips on how to do this effectively?

People argue against that by saying that „Gamine“ isn‘t a word they can imagine Trump using.

But we do know that Trump will use and use and use words that he‘s heard, and we know that Epstein at least was eloquent. As for someone who might know the word „gamine“ just as a matter of course, I wonder if either of them might know someone who was born in France to French parents. Might even have a French first name…?

I could very much imagine Maxwell & Epstein coming up with „Enigmas“ as an oh-so-clever code, and Trump picking it up so he can feel like a clever and special boy, too.