There is.

There are villages in the Netherlands where there is no grade separation, bike paths, foot paths or even lane markings.

There are no street signs; the only road rule is to try to keep to the right, where safe and don’t try to occupy the same space as any other road user.

They have no collisions because every road user understands that every other road user has as much right to be there as they do.

When you put artificial rules in place that gives someone else more rights than someone else, that person will feel more entitled. They are less likely to respect other road users.

Jeremy’s Jeep is a really interesting project. It was really far-gone when he picked it up; without any serviceable panels and with a seized engine.

What he has done is impressive, but it will only be usable on his farm and maybe on some closed trails.

There are a few vintage Kei-Truck EV conversions too, but no bolt-in kits.

Unfortunately, ADAS systems are being forced upon us so that the people who are too incompetent to drive will still be able to/ need to buy a car.

It will be impossible to register a sub-compact modified vehicle for use on public roads.

This guy was known to police and was driving a rental. It was relatively recent vehicle with pedestrian safety systems that were not sufficient.

We don’t need to ban cars, we need to enforce restrictions and change our culture to make people who drive to be more accountable.

We need to have infrastructure so that people aren’t required to have a licence and car to survive.

We need to restrict access from people who should not be driving.

We need to stop relying on ANCAP to determine if a vehicle is safe. There testing methods are flawed and favour the big-players in the Automotive industry. (In some cases literal “big” players)

Make people more aware (and resistant to) Astroturffing advertising campaigns.

Giant stickers like “This Fake Grassroots Advert bought to you by the Fracking Industry” being plastered on all the “No Pylons”, “No Megabatteries”, “No Windfarms” billboards would be a good start.

It’s funny. You ask anyone who uses GenBS in their daily workflow and they all say “it’s really good for these ancillary tasks but not for my core role”. Then you ask someone else who’s core role is those ancillary tasks and who’s ancillary tasks are person A’s core role and they will say the same thing.

Maybe they assume it has any use whatsoever because they only understand their core role and don’t understand their ancillary tasks

The exception are Lawyers and Advertisers. I think that this is because the average Lawyers core role is to generate BS and the majority of Advertising is completely pointless.

There are good lawyers and advertising workers out there; they are the ones who don’t use GenBS.

I’ve already heard from the conspiracy theorists who believe that Jacinta and Dan Andrews blew it up to make everyone buy EVs.

Sigh

I think that this soft-crash in fossil fuel is a good step towards a completely electric future.

For me, the difference in filling up the Jimny then and now is the cost of a Stale Meat Pie and a bottle of Rancid Iced Coffee.

I would love an EV as a daily driver, but I do enjoy my forays into remote locations; something that isn’t possible in any EV, and isn’t practical in a pretend 4WD such as an lifted station wagon** or a diesel-guzzling 4WD tradies pickup***.

(I refuse to call anything a **Sports Utility Vehicle that isn’t sporty or utilitarian) (I refuse to call something a ***Ute, unless it is a traditional Coupé Utility like a Proton Jumbuck or Holden 53/217)

I have them all Zip-Locked.

I have sometimes thought about liquidating Zam for some extra cash, but I think that the complete set would have more value as a gift for a fellow collector.

Remember the Octopus Act in Victoria? And how all that infrastructure had been allowed to deteriorate and now we are lucky if we have a Bicycle path instead of Rail infrastructure?

Remember when Reduce was above Reuse and Recycle?

Now it is is consume, consume, consume.

You had to make sure it is timed to the speed of the traffic so that no-one has the opportunity to read every “page”.

As long as Plugshare data is accurate. A lot of towns only have a 3kW public charger.

No one does the maths to determine that it would take 20 hours to fill a 60kW battery.

Some have 7kW and some even have 22kW, so you can park your car in a side street for 3 hours before you can continue your journey.

Fast DC chargers are available in main highways, and more are being installed all the time, but just because a charger is shown on Plugshare; there is no guarantee that it; A) will be in service, B) will charge your car in a reasonable time, C) will not be occupied.

Apple Wallet lets me choose VISA or EFTPOS on one of my debit cards. It works with my watch and also my phone. I assume GooglePay would also has this feature.

My other debit cards don’t have this option.

I will admit that segfault was not a great community. It was a humour site, a parody of Slashdot similar to The Onion.

One of the features of Segfault was a poll. Due to how it was coded, it was trivial to add custom answers to any poll. Due to the nature of the Internet (with a capital I) at the time, quite a few ‘netizens’ were very deviant. Any time a new poll was created, one of the options would be “Natalie Portman Topless”.

I am pretty sure all the people responsible for this have either grown up and learnt the errors of their ways of gone to 4chan.

Slashdot and Segfault.

At the time, all my online friends used it to discuss techie things.

First social network with real people in my local area? Whirlpool.net.au

It started as a site for peer support for one ISP but became a forum for local and regional technological issues.

There were also other niche forums for niche interests, including a Nissan Pulsar forum; we would organise cruises IRL and share technical information.

Most of these communities have been subsumed by Meta, which I believe is a terrible thing. Their platforms are not as conducive for that sort of socialising, without significant amounts of friction.

Even medium businesses that deal with large items.

An industrial reseller may purchase an engine, lathe or other component from a wholesaler/importer and then onsell to an industry. 2% of a $50k sale is still $1000.

Agreements are made on tenders where the differences are fractions of a percent and an extra months credit.

That will either eat into margins or if the bloke down the road offers it at $49k, cost the sale!

In which case, maybe there are too many resellers. There is no such thing as goodwill any more.

Same with Tipping.

Service staff must be paid a living wage. If they get a little bit of extra cash on the side because they provide excellent service, that is nobody else’s business.

EFTPOS and OSKO. The problem is that some modern payment processors don’t accept them.

EFTPOS and OSKO are semi-public payment methods (sponsored by the banks).

I have now configured ApplePay to use EFTPOS rather than VISA on my debit card, where possible.

I already pay my masseuse with OSKO because she prefers it to cash, and there are no fees.

I will still use Credit Cards for online purchases because; Online stores only accept VISA/MasterCard (and sometimes AMEX) and the Consumer Protections provided by the Scumsuckers are actually quite good.

fIrSt ThEy CaMe FoR tHe FrAcKiNg CoMpAnIeS…