Robert Prior

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• Commented on Shrinking the world
  Bin stealing isn't a thing? I can see the uptick in spray point for house numbers for a while. Not really, no. People paint their number on the bin, but that's so someone can return it to them when the...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  Around here water meters are seen as the prelude to privatisation, which is expected to go about as well as it did in England. Odd. I've never lived anywhere that didn't have a water meter, and it's always been the...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  Likewise in Toronto. Where I live recycling and compost are collected weekly. Garbage is biweekly with a two-bag/item limit, and if you need more you purchase tags for the excess bags. Has apparently really helped reduce the amount of garbage....
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  I'd expect petroleum supply chain companies to simply declare bankruptcy and bug out, leaving behind all sorts of messed up infrastructure that has to be remediated so that it doesn't pose a hazard. Given that that's how petroleum extraction companies...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  Even if magic is an inborn/instinctual sense like a vision, hearing, wizards would still need some sort of training just like muggle babies are taught how to focus on different shapes/colors, sounds, etc. in order to identify and use their...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  a school-lab-scale demonstration of electrolysis - ie. you can see it works, but it takes hours to get even a small bubble of gas Faster than that. Maybe ten minutes to fill a test tube....
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  EVs use the roads, but don't use motor fuels ... so how are the states & Federal Government supposed to collect the EVs share of maintenance costs? Higher registration fees may be one way. That's logical, and indeed that's the...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  So unless your imp can zip in and out of a pocket universe after every noting every bit of knowledge right up to the end of that universe or death of all wizards (whichever comes first), it cannot deliver...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  having been ‘reinforced’ in training that destruction of the SAM was the preferred option, the AI then decided that ‘no-go’ decisions from the human were interfering with its higher mission – killing SAMs – and then attacked the operator...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  So does that mean that the motto of your fantasy equivalent of Facebook is "Move fast and wake Things"?...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  in Sydney the station under the domestic terminal at SYD is already a regular suburban line Likewise the Canada Line in Vancouver. The link to the airport is a terminus station, but the line it connects to services the...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  Oregon's hardly a petro state (no refinery at all), but we also bill more for EV registration, to fund our roads That makes sense. In Texas EV owners pay 3-5 times what ICE owners pay to use the roads. Oregon's...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  Of course not. Passenger rail stations are in town centers because 100+ years ago that's where the most (and richest) people were. Airport on the other hand were built out in the middle of nowhere. Schiphol is out in the...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  I have no problem with EVs having to kick in extra for road construction and maintenance. As long as it's not proportionally more than ICE's kick in. In Texas an EV driver pays 3-5 times more than the average ICE...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  I'm not sure that's where we're going with this train discussion(?) Where did I get confused this time? You went off the rails somewhere…...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  But if it happened you'd eventually have a lot less security theatre, boarding queues, and need for long-haul driving. Butbutbut… Security theatre is necessary to keep people scared and voting fascist Republican. Boarding queues are necessary to drive people into...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  Link not to the proper section because the interaction of Markdown and Wikipedia urls is Fun. If you put the link on a line by itself it seems to work fine (with the added advantage that people can see what...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  I'm so old that I remember when the US and Canada were proud to have the longest undefended border in the world.... Yeah, well, most of our border security measures were put in place to keep your government happy....
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  tick-borne real nasties are already / about to be loose in the UK? Likely/almost certainly. You will likely have a brief period before they become endemic (the diseases). But like malaria, they will spread as the climate changes. How...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  I utterly despise what I call horse flies. Horse flies are painful, but black flies are more dangerous. They can remove enough blood to kill an animal (unlike horse flies). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f389hIxZAOc...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  There is a curve just SE of Lajord. Not a very big one and I needed an RBL to confirm its existence... You're right. Didn't notice that. The rail line is straight, though :-) I grew up in Saskatchewan. Roads...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  places like Saskatchewan or Manitoba (Canadian Prairies) the rule/law is that the road must have a turn every 8 miles or so to keep drivers awake Never heard that. The grid roads occasionally jog because, despite appearances, the Prairies...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  some of the UK (well English) road network still follows the Roman road network I once navigated parts of my trip through England using the Ordinance Survey map of Roman Roads. Worked surprisingly well...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  I'll bet that, as soon as it starts to rain, they'll stand in the doorways of the shelters and smoke there, or they'll stand in the doorways of the trains and have their smoke drift back into the train....
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  In California, if you're homeless and put a rock in a sock to defend yourself, that's considered more criminal than threatening a homeless person with a gun. What if someone defends themself from a homeless person with a rock...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  women's underwear was crotchless Like I said, costuming likely provided the wrong unmentionables…...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  possession of a nunchaku outside a dojo is a felony in California Because clearly a nunchuck is way more dangerous than an AR-15… I wouldn't care so much about your quaint customs if firearms didn't keep leaking across the...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  There was also a certain amount of feminism during this little dust-up in France just before Napoleon.... Which, like equal rights for non-white people, got squashed by Bonaparte.Very reactionary chap, in so many ways…...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  Even the lady in the video would have issues unless she could disrobe most of her outwear first. Maybe. She had another video demonstrating how compressible and maneuverable those hoops are. (More than I expected, although I suspect it took...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  The lead actress in a Netflix or similar show about the gilded age (1870-1900) in New York City said a problem on the set was bathroom breaks. They were probably doing it wrong — and maybe had the wrong unmentionables....