I took my three-year old, intact bearded collie for a walk where we met a couple with a spaniel bitch. They carried on walking, and about 10 minutes later (when they were a good distance away) we let ours off the lead. He raced off towards them at high speed, which is not unknown for him but largely under control these days. We eventually got him back and (almost as an aside) the owner of the other said "ours is in heat at the moment." Could have warned us pal, we'd never have let him off.
About eight weeks later, I took him for a walk along the same canal and let him off. Rounded a corner where he'd got a bit ahead, and he was just gone, disappeared without a trace. I started off as quickly as I could down the canal, passing various people who (as if it were some kind of joke) said things like "oh yes, going very fast that way". Eventually, got him back because a cyclist had the common sense to apprehend him and wait for me - "my dog does this all the time." This was after almost a mile, so the dog hadn't been hanging around.
Beardies have a reputation for going AWOL, but on this occasion I can only presume he had some memory of that fine young spaniel he'd pursued previously, and decided to rejoin the chase. I haven't been back there since. Have considered getting him neutered but we basically like him as he is and have learned to be super-careful at any time. Helps to be warned if someone has a bitch who is likely to be especially interesting at a given time, most owners are good about it but a few just don't seem to understand.
You are taking your dog for a walk off leash and feel that others who are walking their dogs ought to do something to ensure you dog does not run off? Otherwise they don't understand the issue?
I assumed "off leash" because if he can run off even when on a leash, then it's worse than I imagined.
Not to pile on, but ""ours is in heat at the moment." Could have warned us pal, we'd never have let him off." is a pretty extreme sense of entitlement, you should really reconsider how much other people should care about your dog and it's behaviors, ideally it should be none
> Why can't we, as a society, react with the same effectiveness to air pollution?
In the UK at least, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) is a powerful lobby group. Car sales are used as a key economic indicator. Cars have long been seen as aspirational and a measure of personal success. Cars support other sectors of the economy such as civil engineering (roads, bridges), petroleum sales and car accessories, parts and repairs..
Cycling and walking on the other hand? Not so much, despite the many benefits. Just recently, there has been a move in some areas to introduce low-traffic neighbourhoods and create more cycle-ways. The hoo-ha has been deafening. It causes congestion, it blocks emergency vehicles, it increases air pollution because cars are at a standstill. (According to critics.) Newspapers have been running stories about how evil and undemocratic this is, and dear old Nigel Farage seems to have re-invented himself as an anti-cycling campaigner.
I don't think there's an actual conspiracy - there usually isn't. But the status quo serves the interests of some powerful and wealthy groups, and it takes a strong-willed government to overrule them. They'd rather hand-wave about meeting 'green' targets by 2060, and meantime hope that electric vehicles arrive in sufficient numbers to eliminate or ameliorate the problem. The alternatives cause so much political friction that they seem impossible to implement, at least without more courage than our politicians are used to showing.
Indeed. What's really crazy is how the "anti" side has managed to claim to be the side of the working class, fighting against a "green liberal elite". This trope is incredibly harmful; the poor don't even own cars in London, yet breathe the most polluted air.
And immediately anyone mentions restricting traffic, they're all about the disabled, older people, ambulances and essential deliveries, when really all they seem to want is to drive their cars as often and far as they like, without restrictions. It really is infuriating.
I see the anti-side as more arguing that they're middle class. People wealthy enough to afford to not bicycle or take the bus, but of modest enough means that taxes can mean putting car ownership out of reach. The "Liberal elite" is putting a very manageable burden on the rich, actively promoting means of transit that help the poor, and is expecting the middle class to just suffer through the requisite sacrifices. It's a compelling narrative so long as you don't expect to live another 50 years in which case it's a rather dense one becuase you will actually have to pay the interest on your choices today.
What truly baffles me is people who are anti-immigrarion, anti-migrant, and anti-refugee but also against any form of regulation on carbon emissions. As if they don't quite grasp that if your goal is to reduce migration than environmental policy matters more than even immigration policy.
The popular imagination is not renowned for its grasp of detail, but the histories give due credit.
I would just say, antagonistic comments like "the Brits barely mention" and "they can't give credit where it's due" is nationalistic nonsense which has no place here.
You might as well say not enough credit goes to Tommy Flowers, a man I have always admired for his ground-breaking work building Colossus.
Well that is the class system, Tommy was working-class whereas Alan Turing was a posh boy who went to boarding school and Cambridge. So of course he was airbrushed out.
> I would just say, antagonistic comments like "the Brits barely mention" and "they can't give credit where it's due" is nationalistic nonsense which has no place here.
It is an empirical observation. So not sure is expressing "nationalistic nonsense".
There's nothing empirical about it, it's just that journalists are not bound to mention the Polish contribution when discussing Enigma, just as they don't mention many other nuances and wrinkles in the story. The histories (many written by British historians) most certainly do mention it, so your observation is more like "journalists paint with a broader brush than historians and miss out much of the detail." Well, who knew?
Their marketing is based around that sound... So it probably is seen as a big deal to them. Probably some pop-psych idea around having that sound be associated to them through the commercials and usage.
I've never heard a pop during a lifetime of probably eating my bodyweight in Pringles. Either it's always been purely a marketing thing and they're finally actually engineering it into their packaging, or people are attacking Pringles lids in a way I do not understand.
Same - I've literally never heard that "pop". I grew up thinking it was just their slogan, referring to the act of opening the tube (as "pop the top/hood/etc" is used for many other things), not onomatopoeia.
I can’t recall the last time I saw a Pringle’s ad, but wasn’t their slogan “Once you pop, you can’t stop?”
Although that’s a double edged argument. If you say the marketing is true (we need the pop!) then you’ve just stated that don’t think the can needs to be resealable...
> the bad connotation due to piracy made this protocol not standard
Back when Resilio Sync was known as Bittorrent Sync, I proposed it as a file-sharing solution between multiple locations for the company I was working for. Immediately returned with an emphatic refusal to use any kind of software that had "Bittorrent" in the name, regardless of what it was for.
This is the same company where they picked up I had "Bittorrent Software" installed on my work laptop, and the people who ran the auditing software freaked out because, you know, it's Bittorrent! I told them it was a single icon in my PortableApps folder but they just kept saying "There's a Bittorrent client on your PC, you could be fired!" until I deleted the icon.
So yes, the fact it's associated with piracy has made a huge difference in some places.
I had this happen when I put up some shutters in my room. There were about six ventilation holes at the top of each one, and the scene outside was projected onto my wall on a bright morning. It was unexpected, and unexpectedly beautiful.
Most of the discussion so far seems to be that there's no way to get sufficient energy density to power electric vehicles. But what they say is it provides "28,000 years of battery life for cell phones, aircraft, rockets, electric vehicles, sensors and other devices and machinery". I'm starting to wonder if they're just being a bit disingenuous rather than flat-out lying - could they mean the lower-power circuits of electric vehicles, rather than the motors turning the wheels?
But also "NDB is ideally positioned to contribute and lead change in this industry by addressing the primary bottleneck in EV vehicles, the battery, one that can last as long as the vehicle’s does."
About eight weeks later, I took him for a walk along the same canal and let him off. Rounded a corner where he'd got a bit ahead, and he was just gone, disappeared without a trace. I started off as quickly as I could down the canal, passing various people who (as if it were some kind of joke) said things like "oh yes, going very fast that way". Eventually, got him back because a cyclist had the common sense to apprehend him and wait for me - "my dog does this all the time." This was after almost a mile, so the dog hadn't been hanging around.
Beardies have a reputation for going AWOL, but on this occasion I can only presume he had some memory of that fine young spaniel he'd pursued previously, and decided to rejoin the chase. I haven't been back there since. Have considered getting him neutered but we basically like him as he is and have learned to be super-careful at any time. Helps to be warned if someone has a bitch who is likely to be especially interesting at a given time, most owners are good about it but a few just don't seem to understand.