In fairness, the only thing many people will lack is water. It’s not an exclusive stash, but in addition to what’s in your cupboards.

You can get 10L or 25L quite cheaply. 1 should do per person, maybe with an extra for cooking. Or just grab some big bottles of water.

A hand cranked flashlight, candles and lighter are all a must anyhow, for a power cut. It might also be worth having a cheap camping stove tucked away.

Food wise. It’s just a big bag of pasta or rice, along with some cans/jars to make it pleasant to eat. Throw in some hiking snack bars and you’re sorted.

The problem is there are 2 categories. Microwave safe just means it won’t explode, or throw sparks. The other type sorely lacks a name still. It’s the stuff that is transparent to microwaves and so won’t heat up at all, except for heat transfer from the food.

They did eventually participate. While their initial behaviour wasn’t the best, I also understand why they dragged their feet. There was a definite witch hunt going on, for someone to blame. Once that calmed down, they did actually help with investigating it.

Ultimately, it’s of mostly academic interest. Where do we need to tighten down on things to avoid a repeat incident. The best answer would be “Both”.

Also, do you have a link to any papers talking about the man-made origin theory? I’ve not checked in a while, but last time I looked it sent me down a lot of rabbit holes, with nothing ultimately backing it up.

The complication is the double jump.

In the early days of COVID, there were 2 strains spreading. One of those fizzled out and disappeared after a few weeks. Genetically, they seemed to be independent jumps. A single mistake wouldn’t account for this.

It’s also worth noting that the first known infected all spent time in Wuhan wildlife market. They got fairly good tracking from mobile phones, even if the direct evidence was destroyed by the containment/cleaning effort.

Basically, the surrounding evidence doesn’t fit an accidental leak (2 jumps). It doesn’t really fit an intentional release (very geographically focused). It is consistent with it jumping from a sustained infection pool in the market. (Multiple jumps from the same small area at different times).

Back-coiling is a game changer. Every other coil is reversed, leaving a net zero in coils. It just pulls out straight.

The engineering requirements are also a lot higher. It’s the difference between a nut, bolt and spanner, compared to a welding machine.

That makes me nervous as well. Hopefully, there are enough people involved to know not to kill the golden goose for a quick buck.

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Ultimately it’s a slow and steady strategy. There goal is long term profitability, not short term gains. In the long term, the best strategy is not to piss off your customers.

The advantage of this is that it can snowball to impressive levels. At least until a exec with more education than brains does a pump and run on it. A mistake steam seems to know to avoid.

That doesn’t help against hardware thermal runaway. The pi would overheat its own ram chips and hard lock up. A simple power cycle fixed it.

I’ve found that a pi is good enough, computationally, but not reliability wise.

A lot of things like advanced light control goes through my host, so any lockups or crashes are bad. My pi held up for about 18 months before it began to play up. I’ve found a small NUC system has higher reliability for the same price and power usage.

There’s an awkward open secret in the UK.

The new forest has a significant ‘wild’ pony population. More than the forest can support over winter. The excess is gathered up and sold. While some are brought as riders, most are sold to france. On a completely unrelated note. France has no problem eating horse.

I fully agree, there’s some stupid ones out there. But they are actually less common than you initially think.

I spend far too long going up and down the motorways. I get bored and start comparing the various problematic cars. Most lack the nice clean cut off line, or it’s set so high as to be invisible. I’ve rarely been dazzled by cars with a properly set beam dip. It’s either high beams, or messed up beam dip.

The rudeness comes from London mostly. When you pack people too close together, they tend to develop a bunch of social rules, to keep sane. Those rules are unspoken and dynamic. That also cause an impressive reaction when you break them by mistake. It’s quite common worldwide, but London it particular about them.

Once you’re clear of the big smoke, and get a feel for the lingo and etiquette, we are actually quite a friendly bunch.

That’s still a problem, but it’s not a new one. There’s always been the issue that lights bright enough to see ahead reliably are also bright enough to dazzle. It’s also a lot easier to cope with a quick flash, however, rather than continuous glare.

The issue with a lot of LED lights isn’t brightness, its beam dip. The light should be angled downwards so it never shines into the oncoming traffic.

Unfortunately, a lot of retrofitted brighter bulbs don’t play nicely with the beam dips. Car companies also err towards helping their diver, rather than the oncoming ones.

It looks like a UK bus. If you want to help make the bus company’s life miserable there is a useful trick. This is the sort of thing a lot of parish council members will get disproportionately angry about. They also tend to have far less to do than higher bits of government. They also know a lot more about the inner workings of local government, and who’s ear to burn about it. A politely written letter (or a few from several people) can get them up in arms about it.

Once you set that in motion, wait a week or 2, then also contact the local papers about it. I’ve seen them roll with far smaller stories than this.

Neither group has much/any hard power, but the soft power of the NIMBY croud can be extremely effective against public facing companies.

Edit to add.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/artificial-light-nuisances-how-councils-deal-with-complaints

It could be argued that that light is a statutory nuisance.

The pyramids were built by skilled labour. One of the options for paying taxes was to work on public works. It was also seen as a religious event, akin to modern missionaries.

Room is too well insulated and sealed. Once the bedroom door is closed, the air exchange is too low. I’m planning to fit a heat exchanging fan system next year to permanently fix it.

Opening a window isn’t as bad as it first seems. Most of the heat in a home (at least a brick one) is in the structure. Change the air, close the window, and it will rapidly warm up again. It’s only leaving it open for longer periods that cool it down.