"it's fine to have a grenade in the house because more houses burn down with candles than with grenades."

That is a good one. It is a frequent line of defence whenever the subject of EV fires gets raised (quite a lot recently) that the stats show ICE vehicles are more likely to catch fire than EVs so EVs are a lower risk. As anyone who's done a formal risk assessment knows, there is more to risk than simple probability; severity of consequence should be factored in. A better indication of relative risk might be cumulative cost of insurance claims for vehicle fires that have arisen from vehicle faults or accidents. Which is not to say that simple probabilities are of no interest (e.g. how do probabilities of the different vehicle types catching fire during 'refuelling' compare, or the probabilities of catching fire when parked?).

tomo,
The law is often a bit slow keeping up with developments. Obviously there ought to be laws endorsing well-intentioned malicious damage. The judges are giving a pointer to the lawmakers.

The attendees of the various COP fests will be grateful for the cover provided by The Dark Cloud: No, no, we're all jetting into the Riviera, suffering the travel, working our way through mounds of vol-au-vents and canapes because it's much lower carbon than doing a conference call. Follow the science.

In your shoes, I'd be thinking it was about time to ditch Twitter. In my own shoes I didn't feel like making friends with it in the first place. On a related point, I'm glad that few people are still tediously working through the formula "X, formerly known as Twitter"; I mean it still says "twitter" in the URL.

Nothing wrong with "reparable" or "reparability" spellings. The concept has been foreign to Apple for a long time, but it was certainly interesting seeing the extremes of repairer hostility they've built into their gadgets.

Not just Apple though. I had a nice HP calculator from the early '90s. Tried to repair it recently after its keyboard was damaged (left out in the rain which, I think, has washed away the conductive print on the film under the buttons). The thing was held together with ~16 hidden rivets. You *might* be able to do a neat job after practising on three or four sacrificial calculators, but I certainly made a mess of this one.

This deliberate hardware booby-trapping has a parallel in software. IMO, the worst failing of Microsoft's operating system is the inability to create a useful system backup. You own the software. You own the data. Yet you can't save all this in such a way that, should the hardware fail, you can restore your software and data to a replacement. Ransomware wouldn't have the bite it does if everyone had useful backups.

But such a backup would make software piracy easier, so tough luck. No backups for you.

Funny that Red Cross ad. Same characters, same storyboard (more or less), but different words from the one you posted earlier. At least in this one he's talking about earthquakes from the pile of rubble. It's weird enough, but the other one with him prattling about climate change from the exact same pile of rubble was really weird.

I confess I make donations of convenience to the American Red Cross. I still have a US bank account, and an occasional $5 online donation is my way of keeping the account from going dormant. Since it's more than the interest on the account, it negates any guilt I might feel about interest undeclared in my Aussie tax return (though I bet it's no legal protection).

Cadogan on a couple of volatile EVs that have negligible isolation between battery and passengers. I still don't like his OTT delivery style, but did enjoy his parody logic: "it's fine to have a grenade in the house because more houses burn down with candles than with grenades."

tomo,
Wasn't familar with the Dinenage story. I liked Rumble's "up yours" response.

There might be a common thread with that Parncutt fellow from a few days ago. The latter particularly puts me in mind of a story one of my brothers had of his boarding school days.

On a gala occasion of some sort, the cadets were to march, salute the dignitaries and march on around the oval. The student at the front, swinging the baton thing, was always on his dignity, and not popular. What's more, he thought it was to be two laps. At the completion of the first lap he marched on, but the squad behind him marched off. It was only when he called "Eyes right" for the salute that he realised there was nobody with him. And off he skulked.

No doubt the telling was a bit better than the incident itself, but it fits the virtue signalling activists well enough. Much as they might like to imagine they're leaders, they need to be sure their mob is with them. They're not so sure of themselves out on their own.

Still wishing discussions at Jo Nova's would last for more than a day. On Monday, tonyb recommended a book — The Dark Cloud — which details the enormous energy consumption of our hi-tech Internet world.

I believe its claims rely on the same sort of superficial analysis used in climate and health stuff. I'm not sure whether it was the book itself, or just tonyb's interpretation, but I couldn't accept this (said of climate conferences):

the amount of CO2 emitted by people jetting there, staying in hotels and jetting back is not so very different if they had stayed at home and did it all by Zoom, email, tweets etc.

But that was in Monday's unthreaded, so it obviously has to be dead by Wednesday. Better structured here, but more people there.

tomo,
Reminds me of our petrol standards. We only have official standards for "Unleaded" and "95 octane". The stuff sold as 98 need only comply with the 95 standard. Seems the same with renewable energy: you may find you're just paying more for the very same product.

Jo had coverage of that "garden hose in the warehouse" incident a few days ago. For my part, I'd rather have a nuclear power station next door than a warehouse like that.

The Musk(ish) YouTube was weird, as you say. Definitely generated/munged, which is the key point. I don't think "AI generated" makes much difference. (inclined to push back against the term "AI" because it's so nebulous).