jms

The first time we tested cutting the power back in the day, the backup generator didn't fire! Turns out someone had pushed the big red stop button, which remains pushed in until reset.

That would have been a major problem if we'd had a nighttime power outage.

After that we ran regular switchover testing :)

The other time we ran into trouble was after someone drove a car into the local power substation. Our systems all ran fine for the immediate outage, but the power company's short term fix was to re-route power, which caused our voltage to be low enough for our UPS batteries to slowly drain without tripping over to the generator.

That was a week or two of manually pumping diesel into the generator tank so we could keep the UPS batteries topped up.

We were once enjoying a nice picnic in a park when it started raining bees.

It turned out their was a drone above us attracting bees (not sure if it was the sound or if it had disturbed something), and every time a bee got struck by a propeller it would fall down onto us.

So a flamethrower may not even be necessary! Poor bees :(

It goes against mainstream advice that no sun exposure is good exposure, and that getting a tan is not healthy. However I never "tan" my hands and they don't look any darker, but I've never burned them, even though they're the place that will get the most sunscreen rubbed off. Ditto for feet.

I've been living in Australia and New Zealand, and have been terrified of sun exposure - during peak times (summer mid-day) it's scary how quickly you can burn.

However I also have low vitamin D.

My current strategy is to check the UV levels (I've got a widget on my personal dashboard) and whenever the UV levels are moderate or below, I try to get as much sun exposure as possible - shorts and t-shirt, or topless.

I then cover up when the UV levels are demonstrably high.

My theory is that low levels of exposure are very good - you get your vitamin D, whatever else you need, and your body starts to build an appropriate amount of melanin.

The worst thing to do is to avoid sun all the time, then suddenly get massive UV doses.

I've noticed that my hands very rarely get burned compared to other areas - my theory is due to constant exposure that part of my body is more resistant compared to the pasty areas.

My key point is that you can view the UV rating and protect yourself appropriately - e.g. high caution summer-midday, zero caution winter mid-day.

Not extremely unlikely if they were identical drives from the same manufacturing batch. It's good practise to use diverse manufacturers or at least batches when adding disks to a raid array for just this reason.

I had to laugh at the commonality of experience. My toddler bathtimes often involve negotiations as to which vehicles he's allowed to bring in too!

Keeping his brand new fire truck complete with electric flashing lights and siren out was last night's big challenge.

Blind people who use screen readers usually turn up the speed to something unintelligible to the rest of us.

Maybe reading a computer screen is a simpler task than talking person to person, but it's an interesting datapoint!

I made a command line music playing frontend. It has a list of all my music as a flat text file, then if I run "music" it shuffles randomly, or I can add a regex as an argument to pick the files from the list. It works surprisingly well - given my folder structure I can just type in "music <artist>" or "music <genre>" or "music <specific song>" and it just does it. It also has a flag for turning shuffle mode on or off.

Very simple, but very comfortable for me.

I also created my own TODO / dashboard app, where all tasks are on a schedule (do this every x days) and I can enter a value each time I complete a task. These then show up as graphs on my dashboard - helpful for tracking weight etc. I also graph a bunch of random things automatically in the same system (how many unread emails I have).

It also tracks how many tasks are overdue so I can measure my general ability to get stuff done, and if it gets overwhelming I can tweak the settings so it just shows me a few things (or more realistically I tweak the task to either not need doing/tracking, or I slow down it's cadence).

How do you see things playing out now that we're near 0 interest rates and in some cases negative? Will governments continue to be loose via negative interest rates, through some other mechanism, or will they be forced to tighten policy?

In theory as you approach zero smaller changes produce bigger results in an aysmptotic fashion, but in reality lenders have margin to think about.

Maybe the zero rates will take into account lenders margin, and once that is taken into effect the rates will reflect the asymptotic curve.

If you're in a high UV area and you want to try something like this, use a UV tracker so you can be informed about the risks.

I have a widget on my phone that displays the current level and estimated burn time, and can pull up a graph of estimated & forecast (turns out cloudy days DO generally block a lot of UV).

It's great to be able to get as much skin exposed as possible during the low UV periods for gentle UV exposure, then know when to cover up & sunscreen during the harsh periods.

I used "Regularly" and it worked great. I've now upgraded to my own system which plugs into my dashboard and can generate graphs. Each time I complete a task I can give it a score, which is then graphed. I just use it for my weight, but you could use it for anything.

I should really tidy it up and promote it!

I actually agree with both you and the parent poster - this is a real problem.

My position would be that you still need assistance programs as well as the UBI for people like the above, but I'd treat it as a health issue rather than a poverty issue.

I think this is where you really do need a paternalistic government for people who need the guidance, but it should be the exception, not the rule. Let's respect peoples choices for themselves and only step in if necessary.

I'd argue that Alice is either addicted or mentally ill, and supported living facilities or similar would be the way to go. She would still be entitled to her UBI, which would be her route out of the system once she no longer needs to spend it on drugs.

So I'd say that UBI will never completely replace all government programs, but it should be the default and go a long way to reducing the need for existing programs.

If I were implementing it, I'd start with a low amount (well below the cost of living) and increase it over time. I'd leave the current support programs in place. The current programs are means tested anyway, so the hope would be that as UBI increases, use of the current programs would reduce, and we would have time to reorganise them as needed.

This would also give us a chance to measure the effects and get real world data as to the impacts on society and government incoming/spending.

I guess the real question would be how much it would all cost. My gut feeling is that short term it would decrease productivity as people wouldn't feel the need to work so hard, but long term it would increase productivity as people will be able to invest more in themselves.

So what if someone spends it all on whiskey or oxy? They're maximising their own preferences. If they were addicted to alcohol, sudden withdrawal can kill.

One of the big reasons for UBI is the belief that an individual can better assess their own needs and wants, and procure them more cheaply than the government.

This is partly a moral/philosphical stand - the tension is between giving individual freedom in the form of money, or giving freedom via paternalistic methods where the government decides what is best for you. It can be argued either way.

I do agree it would be wise to have systems in place to trickle the money in daily instead of monthly - this would help your concern of people blowing all their money at once (but not prevent them spending on what was most important to them).

I also think that just UBI will never be enough - there is a place for targeted government support - healthcare, addiction (part of healthcare), mental health (also part of healthcare).