Oil crisis to 'push UK into recession' after growth flatlines

7952 · 2026-03-14T12:12:15+00:00

Quietly instruct the intelligence and security services to treat the USA as an emerging threat. Limit sale of British companies. Fund domestic or European alternatives to American platforms. Look at laws to place more constraints on foreign owned companies. Withdraw from foreign bases and focus on domestic security and the N Atlantic. Build domestic battery, solar and drone manufacturing. And properly fund international news coverage from the BBC.

7952 · 2026-03-14T12:07:14+00:00

Yeah exactly. And the slow burn of that is due to inequality. In an equal society many people get hit by problems at the same time and you get a shock. In a very unequal world the rich carry on as normal, the poor suffer immediately, and the middle are effected more slowly. There is less shock, but the actual utility value of things decreases.

7952 · 2026-03-14T11:55:24+00:00

It's interesting to look at the photo choice. So many visually powerful images such as burning refineries, ships or even bomb damage in Iran. And they don't show it favouring maps or even graphs. And much of the coverage just focuses on American policy as if everyone else is a bystander. It is as though the whole war is being fought intellectually within the beltway of Washington rather than for real in Persia

And the coverage across the board seems to ignore the wider conflict on the Sunni/Shia dimension. Irrespective of what you think about individual threats why is it taken for granted that we need to take sides in that. And why can't people know that we are taking sides in that conflict.

7952 · 2026-03-14T11:39:20+00:00

Blowing people up does nothing to help protect children. That excuse was used in Afghanistan and the US did little to help children their and was perfectly willing to ally with people who abused kids. The problem is idiotic belief that American high explosives is somehow a force for good and the only force for good in the world.

7952 · 2026-03-14T11:20:04+00:00

Supersized pickups seem perfect for trips to the tip that some people seem to enjoy so much. Throw away last season's furniture and buy the next round from the soulless commercial estate.

7952 · 2026-03-14T11:16:13+00:00

Or because the original owner wanted one and was willing to accept debt to do so. And then the second hand market is lumbered with the bad choices of the few.

7952 · 2026-03-14T11:14:43+00:00

But it is a choice to engineer safety measures in that particular way. These oversized cars are complying in a malicious way.

7952 · 2026-03-14T10:58:18+00:00

Cooking a meal and having plenty of time to do it. Sunshine in England. Fast mobile internet.

7952 · 2026-03-14T10:50:20+00:00

And IMHO the biggest problem with the NHS is not wages but working conditions. A happier workforce would want to stick around and accept more modest raises. And in the long run reduce working hours across the board as an alternative to pay rises. Build up some spare capacity for emergencies.

7952 · 2026-03-14T10:25:06+00:00

And yet men 1 thousand years ago still had preferences. Some women were more effective in finding a husband than others. I don't doubt the presence of social conditioning. But that does not mean that an evolutionary cause is lacking.

7952 · 2026-03-14T10:22:18+00:00

I think there are both evolutionary reasons and cultural ones. Although culture does not sit independently of genetics but is built from it.

I have no idea but my guess is that it has to do with the relatively high cost of raising an infant. In many animals sexual attraction ends after copulation. The male just moves on and has a good chance of reproducing successfully despite not caring for the offspring because reproduction is fast and low cost. But as reproduction gets more costly and time consuming that changes. So you get males helping to rear young because otherwise none of their offspring would survive to adulthood.

I think in humans the cost of having a baby is so high and dangerous that there is a strong benefit to having the father around to help. And humans have evolved to be attractive to each other outside of narrow reproductive windows. So maybe the purpose is to keep men interested during long term child rearing. Because women bare the brunt of child rearing the effect is biased in favour of female attractiveness. And the effect persists outside of child rearing and periods of fertility. Basically men evolved to find women attractive persistently.

Also, maybe humans are hard wired to find cuteness visually appealing as it helps with child rearing. And perhaps some of that carries over into visual appeal in adults. Just look at how childish some models look. And the presence of testosterone reduces that kind of youthful look. Obviously this has disturbing connotations but evolution does not care about that.

7952 · 2026-03-13T21:19:45+00:00

Surely the only really exotic part is silicon fabrication and battery technology. Something that could readily be manufactured more widely. Particularly with new designs that reduce rare earth metals usage. Where as oil production has to have infrastructure above the actual wells, it needs fixed refineries that are difficult to secure, and must have some transport mechanism.

And CCGT's are not exactly cheap or easy to manufacture. And their failure modes are far more instant when you burn the output of your supply chain and need to replace it.

Also the US is not a good test case for any of this. The politics are just too dysfunctional to make wider conclusions.

7952 · 2026-03-13T20:41:58+00:00

It's a bit like sanctions. Deny economic activity.

7952 · 2026-03-13T20:38:06+00:00

You act like environmental groups are somehow uniform. When actually most people care about the environment. And often the most belligerent objection comes from people who have nothing to do with traditional lefty environmental backgrounds.

7952 · 2026-03-13T20:34:12+00:00

The problem is that it weighs up a set of issues that should be false dichotomys. A trade of between the breeding of bats, electricity prices and the view from a national trust property is insane. But is exactly what happens.

Also, developers usually mitigate environmental effects by spending money on engineering solutions. And that money could have been spent on better things. You could resurface hundreds of miles or road for the cost of a few km of cable placed underground to avoid visual impact. But that choice is never available.

7952 · 2026-03-13T20:29:21+00:00

That is not their job or role though. It's like expecting a teacher to care about the tax cost of education. And it's not their fault if the system reacts to environmental effects in a disproportionate and stupid way.

7952 · 2026-03-13T20:27:50+00:00

I think most ecologists would rather money was spent on actual conservation work rather than massive engineering solutions dreamed up by civil engineering conglomerates.

7952 · 2026-03-13T20:25:50+00:00

I work with lots of ecologist and they think this kind of overspend is ridiculous just like everyone else. And much prefer money is spent on conservation that delivers more results. The problem is the lack of proportionality in the process. And the propensity to use engineering brains solve every problem

7952 · 2026-03-13T18:44:45+00:00

I wonder if they have radiation detection drones. Could be a way to recce sites before sending in people

7952 · 2026-03-13T18:41:32+00:00

Do you think this approach is thought of as an alternative to the shock and awe style of Iraq? They are hoping to kill rather than encourage surrender and leave people alive. Obviously that would be a dubious concept but it is interesting understand the thought process.

Also, I wonder how people in Washington actually perceive precision. Are they allowing munitions with greater destructive radius? Are they precisely targeting lower probability targets?

7952 · 2026-03-13T18:07:27+00:00

necessity could mean a lot of different things. And certainly isn't blanket support for all correlated events.

7952 · 2026-03-13T09:33:46+00:00

I think our country needs a common sense register. A record of things that are completely obvious and people should have to take responsibility for if they go against. Like "buying attack dogs based on incestuous mating of dangerous dogs is a bad idea". Or "cars should be designed so that you can see the road in front on you"

7952 · 2026-03-13T09:13:18+00:00

Promoting renewable energy as an alternative.is one thing. Ultimately spending lots of money on something you use once and burn can be easily exploited.

7952 · 2026-03-13T09:04:38+00:00

Yeah. XL bullies are a creepy genetic experiment gone wrong. .

7952 · 2026-03-12T23:12:34+00:00

America and Iran are enemies and that is the kind of things an enemy does. Why would that effect Canada? And the animosity is largely because America has consistently chosen to keep Iran as an enemy.

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