• 9 Posts
  • 473 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • Ah I see my confusion now

    His “water fuel cell” was later examined by three expert witnesses in court who found that there “was nothing revolutionary about the cell at all and that it was simply using conventional electrolysis.”

    I initially took it to mean they’d examined the fuel cell in the vehicle but the way that’s written it’s not necessarily the case so it was probably a separate demo prototype to the buggy.



  • Haha I never knew there was a real person attached to that myth. I was hearing about that as a big conspiracy theory from teachers when I was kid all the way here in Australia.

    That’s interesting he did produce an actual machine that could move though. I was reading the Wikipedia about him and they don’t go in to that exactly. They point out that his design and vehicle were just using conventional electrolysis and thus couldn’t work as claimed, but it still moved. What was the catch then? It uses a battery to do the electrolysis, does it just use up all the battery to inefficienly split out the hydrogen using more energy than gained from the hydrogen in the process? Making it a really weird electric car?



  • You’re unsurprisingly getting a lot of replies along these lines, taking issue with this strange and unfounded blanket statement about an entire country and you’re replying back to them with similar riffs on the theme that those commenters are being disingenuous and masking a kind of widely known understanding that the reason people visit there is for the sex industry.

    I have to say I think you might have gotten the wrong idea there. There’s a kernel of truth to it in that yes, it is known to be a place where sex tourism occurs so you could say it was famous for it, but I also don’t think that that’s like, their thing. Other commenters have tried to persuade you of this by pointing out compelling reasons one might go there other than for sex tourism but you seem unwilling to believe them because of this idea you’ve latched on to that they’re being deliberately naive. I think it might help just to point out that, at least amongst Australians, this is a very mainstream holiday destination, like it’s not a place where anyone would raise their eyebrows to hear you were going there. You could happily discuss this at any workplace and say you’re going to Thailand for a holiday and you’d probably get a lot people saying how much they love the place and asking which part you’re going to. I’d be surprised to learn if somehow all or even most of these people, sometimes families with children, had all gone there for a shag and also that this practice was so widely known that it was somehow a reasonable, immediate assumption to make about why they’d chosen Thailand and yet they also decided to broadcast this intention to everyone they know.

    While I don’t know the stats, I would guess that a lot of the world’s sex tourism probably occurs there, so I imagine that’s where you got the idea that that’s THE reason to go there but it’s also just a place where a lot of tourism generally happens.


  • It was pretty impressive, I remembered wondering if that was something Americans got to do that we didn’t in Australia. Seems like other than a few localised experiments in some states it was fiction even for the yanks at the time. I must say I actually still think it’s pretty dope doing that. I liked the little remote controlled fireplace screensaver too. Seemed very cosy.


  • This is obviously funny for the intended punchline but it’s such a good satire of the most bullshit ‘lifehacks’, like, presumably the non-joke version would be something like allow yourself 30 minutes or 1 hour every morning and that’s already laughable to begin with and amounts to “have more time” as the ‘hack’. Gee thanks guys I’d never have thought of that.




  • The easy answer is no, that is not an overreaction to the problem as you’ve assessed it. You didn’t want to drive to begin with, because of doubts about your capacity to drive, then when you did drive you encountered a dangerous situation and now you don’t to do it again, that’s just rational.

    The tricky part is deciding if you’re going to persevere anyway. Though not wanting to drive again is rational and probably good for everyone else on the roads, you are also most likely not uniquely incompetent even if you’re self critical and doubting. This might be where the idea that you are overreacting comes from, the tension behind this rational response and the simultaneous idea that perhaps you’re being too self critical. Ironically, I think both are true.

    For better or for worse we’re living in a world where you can continue to do this and on balance of probabilities, you will get used to driving and get more capable with it, but there’ll be a period while you reach that stage where you and everyone else on the road will be at risk of harm. That’s not a great situation and something that in other contexts for other activities might not be tolerated, but it also might be a necessary one. It might perhaps put your mind at ease (or the opposite depending on how you interpret this), to realise that the road is full of drivers that might not be “good” drivers because they’re, nervous, have bad multitasking, are drunk or on drugs, are tired, aren’t concentrating, are underconfident, are overconfident, angry right this second, inexperienced, over experienced to the point of becoming inattentive and all manner of factors that should objectively mean people just shouldn’t drive but nevertheless we do and in the time and circumstances that we find ourselves in you wouldn’t be against the moral zeitgeist on this to decide that driving is necessary or beneficial enough for you that you’re going to become just one more such driver less than optimal driver in the roads. Hopefully after a while you’ll get past the fear and inexperience and that will make you a driver of at least average competence.

    This isn’t to say I think you should do that. One less car on the road, especially driven by someone who by their own judgement thinks they aren’t a good driver and also doesn’t want to drive would, in the grand scheme of things be good, but I acknowledge it would be hypocrisy of me to suggest that you should exclude yourself on this basis when very few of the rest of us would.




  • I felt every word of this and it’s so hard and so unfair. I’m really sorry life dealt you this hand and all it’s associated costs. Did you and she part on good terms at least? If you’d been the one to wrap things up a year sooner maybe she’d have taken it hard anyway for assuming she wouldn’t be committed to you. It might be important that she knows you don’t hold any sense of blame or resentment for how it turned out.

    Hope you find that happy equilibrium accepting help from your folks eventually, they want to see you well just as much as you want to be well I imagine.