oyster

In other areas, I have read many things Mercola has written. And find his standards not good. Sure, he knows enough to grab some interesting, even useful, information and make an article. Might be helpful. But some is garbage. And everything is highly derivative. Like all these people, his aim is to produce the best clickbait he can. The shingles links are interesting but too many potentially confounding factors - rheumatic disorder, medicines, etc. And what I keep seeing is development of shingles in about 10 to 14 days. Mine took over four weeks.

Mine is 7 speed. If I want to achieve extra oommph, I tend to flick the gear lever and switch to so-called Sports mode. (That's on top of four overall choices of setting.) But I rarely overtake. Most of the time, it simply isn't worth it. Often the roads don't give sufficient visibility. All too often, the vehicle I might want to overtake turns off quite soon. Or there is another just up ahead so the gain is nothing. Also, manually choosing gear prevents that possibility of coasting. Which the system choose for itself under some circumstances. And that minimises fuel consumption. A year or two ago, I was driving at about 50 coming out of a corner, which seemed reasonable to me, and was about to speed up to just under 60. The Jag following decided it wasn't. So pulled out and overtook. Unfortunately for him, a car coming in from a side road on the right started to move. Just caught his rear bumper which flew across the road. The Jag did stop and go back. But it was pretty forseeable if you know the road. And if you don't, it isn't safe to overtake there!

Can't help myself making another comment. One of the cars I drive has a dual-clutch gear system. And paddles on the steering wheel you can use to force a gear change. The widespread opinion seems to be that people like that option. At least in principle. But in the real world, drivers never - or almost never - use the paddles. (Bear in mind, it was widely used on higher performance cars so that drivers could pretend it was a manual gearbox. Occasionally gaining a bit of performance. And allowing show-off behaviour.) It is a brain-jar to go from thinking that the gearbox will handle it all to having to make gear-change decisions. I can imagine this synthesised noise being unbearable. Who actually wants engine noise to blot out their choice of music or radio? We have already gone through many years of increasing gearbox intelligence. The first auto I drove was reasonable at being encouraged to change gear just by accelerator pressure. (Not the kick-down - you could sometimes do a double-shift down when the gearbox decided to change down and then you also hit the kick-down switch.) How many of us are actually better at choosing gear than a modern, sophisticated gearbox? Why, with adaptive cruise control the car beats me pants down at choosing optimal combinations of gear and brake when doing downhill.

I now only have one spinning disc that I use. Several in cupboards, etc. That is the second (1 TB) drive in a Windows PC which I only keep for a couple of minor reasons. (Has a 256 GB SSD as prime drive.) Everything else is some form of SSD.

I'm trying to imagine someone who learned to drive on an EV, and has never driven any non-auto ICE, being confronted by this!

Best of luck. But the proper answer is to avoid relying on any single device. I have most stuff on at least two devices and in the cloud. (A bolt of lightning could destroy every data device in a house.)

They had been contacted so knew all about it. Work is planned but all through them - they have spokenw ith me. But the person who did still not!

The idea that any charge should be related to mileage seems pretty much unassailable. But there are questions. Like the difference between a Zoe and the latest USA pick-up with a sub-4 second 0 to 60, weight of around 3 tonnes, etc. Surely they could be taxed at the same rate?

Foresight is an amazing thing. It's what consulting true experts attempts to provide. Brexit red tape puts brakes on UK innovation and EU sales Many new products now need multiple safety test facilities for home and abroad, say entrepreneurs https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/29/brexit-red-tape-puts-brakes-on-uk-innovation-and-eu-sales

It might get to the point where a referendum ends up being towards the academic.

Covid vaccine - appointment arrived a week or so ago. Not sure whether advisable for me so contacted them to ask. They replied and said yes, fine. (Though I was not exactly reassured. Ended up thinking I'd feel more of a fool getting/passing on Covid than having a vaccine issue.) Today, actual vaccination. Got to the pleasant nurse/person who asked me some questions about health, etc., and decided I needed to be referred to their consultant! This was the precise situation I tried to avoid! Waiting for call...

He shouldn't have been.

A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a man below. He descended a bit more and shouted: "'Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago but I don't know where I am". The man below replied "You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude". "You must be a technician." said the balloonist. "I am" replied the man "how did you know?" "Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you have told me is probably technically correct, but I've no idea what to make of your information and the fact is, I'm still lost.... Frankly, you've not been much help at all. If anything, you've delayed my trip with your talk." The man below responded, "You must be a Tory politician". "I am" replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?" "Well," said the man "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You have risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you've no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my f**king fault!!! https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1585215820208439296.html

Are there sufficient guests to need more than a few sarnies on the kitchen table?

I think there is all too often a mental disconnect. As party leader, they are appealing to their voters, and the small proportion of other party voters they think they can persuade. And they continue with that when PM. They seem to entirely miss that fact that being PM, likely more than any other job, needs to be PM for the whole country. Not just their supporters.