..gggggGGGGOOOOOOOOOODDDDdddddd.....

I can't help but feel the music may be slightly overstated, haha

To everyone who thinks they'd do better, saying "oh i'd just turn this way here, then back here, don't oversteer, dip the clutch, you'll be fine, dangerous over reaction." You should know that you don't get to plan it out like that from the relaxing comfort of a computer chair.

Put yourself in her position:
- did she sleep last night or did the kid keep her up?
- perhaps just off a long work shift?
- thinking about 10 other things
- maybe a drive she does every day i.e. boring, not something to hold your interest
- condition and grip of road surface
- and so on.........

It happens when you least expect it (you *always* least expect your car to slide) and unless you're a regular drift racer you don't instantly identify the sensation as skidding.

Source: rolled a car after skidding on an oil spill

Touche. You are correct, I overstated.
Treason is unpatriotic, period?
Edit:even then there's the likes of Chelsea Manning, who some would say was a patriotic traitor....so what is my point?

I'm not prepared to debate the morality of a different timeline, but I disagree that force wouldn't be justified to try to preserve the Union from armed secession....now if 2/3 of the state's voted to disband...or 3/4, whatever the line is, yes, monstrous to wage war to force it's preservation, but they didn't do that.

Hard to overstate how much I agree with what he says. Science is knowledge and let the politics start based on the science.

Update on my hometown figures. Our local paper says there were 1000 at the march. ONE THOUSAND. I can't help but think that is overstated. But even if you say "only" 800 -- that is mind blowing.

Fry is almost certainly correct that modern ideas of the middle ages are overstating things. Certainly scholars of the time had sources available describing the earth as a sphere.

I was told the confusion stemmed from Isidore of Seville who wrote a book called the Etymologies, in Latin, to summarise the Greek books from classical antiquity. This was becoming important at a time when Greek was studied much less, and the originals were therefore inaccessible to most scholars. Anyway, in one passage of his Etymologies he described the shape of the earth as being round, like a wheel.

This probably didn't cause nearly as much confusion as people think.

Hmm. I agree that Trump is an incompetent egotistical blowhard, who drums up support by drastically overstating America's problems. America doesn't *need* drastic change.

...BUT, American government, particularly at the national level in Washington really is a complete trainwreck that *does* need drastic change. Both of our disgusting parties hold plenty of blame for that.

I think that the short-term damage that a Trump presidency would cause would be mitigated pretty well by the separation of powers, one of the few elements of our government that does function pretty well. And I feel like it is possible that a long-term benefit could be that Republican voters would get a hard-to-ignore lesson that the "ideals" that are spouted by their party leadership don't work. George W Bush was the best thing to happen for the Democrat party in a long time; Trump could finish the party off and let something better replace it.

Hillary is definitely more competent. In the short term, the country would definitely be better off with her at the helm than Trump. But, I don't see any long-term benefits to electing her.

Republicans would have a prime and familiar scapegoat. The legislative branch ground to a standstill with Obama in office, I think it will/would be worse with Hillary. That might actually be a good thing; it could limit the damage that they can do -- and the consequences of a shitty legislative branch are worse than a shitty president, I think.

And the Democrat party, which had a golden fucking opportunity to lead by example and actually do some exciting GOOD things with government to win voters over, instead did every dirty and questionable thing they could to guarantee that Hillary "I am the establishment" Clinton got their nomination.


Neither side deserves to win, and in fact both sides deserve to lose. I'll be voting 3rd party; not that it will accomplish anything.

Democrats, you could have had my vote if you had selected literally anybody other than Hillary. Hell, I'd probably even have voted for Hillary over Trump if she had beat Bernie fair and square without resorting to all the shady stuff (she probably would have won even without that shit).

Republicans, almost the same goes for you -- I'd pretty happily have voted for anybody other than Trump running against Hillary. Well, maybe not creepy-as-fuck Ted Cruz or some other batshit crazy option like Sarah Palin; but pretty much any of the others.

Too late now though.

I agree. Genius may be overstating things. That said, knowing that you have to drop in on the prey in their blind spot is something I'd think wolves or cats would do, but wee little spiders? That's adorable and scary!

Woah, woah, you're way overstating it. The tech is nowhere near ready for full hands-off driving in non-ideal driving scenarios. For basic navigation Google relies on maps and GPS, but the crux of autonomous navigation is machine learning algorithms. Through many hours of data logged driving, the algorithm will associate more and more accurately certain sensor inputs to certain hazards via equation selection and coefficients. The assumption is that at some point the algorithm would be able to accurately and reliably identify and react to pedestrians, pot holes, construction areas, temporary traffic lights police stops among an almost endless litany of possible hazards.

They're nowhere near there though and there's simply no guarantee that it will ever be sufficiently reliable to be truly hands-off. As mentioned, the algorithm is just an equation with certain coefficients. Our brains don't work that way when we drive. An algorithm may never have the necessary complexity or flexibility to capture the possibility of novel and unexpected events in all driving scenarios. The numbers Google quotes on reliability from its test driving are on well mapped, simple to navigate roads like highways with few of these types of challenges but real life is not like that. In practice, the algorithm may be safer than humans for something like 99% of scenarios (which I agree could in itself make driving safer) but those exceptional 1% of scenarios that our brains are uniquely able to process will still require us to be ready to take over.

As for Tesla, all it has is basically auto-cruise, auto-steer and lane changing on request. The first two is just the car keeping in lane based on lane marker input from sensors, and slowing down & speeding up based on the car follow length you give it. The most advanced part of it is the changing lanes if you indicate it to, which will effectively avoid other cars and merge. It doesn't navigate, it's basically just for highways, and even on those it won't make your exit for you (and apparently will sometimes dive into exits you didn't want based on lane marker confusion from what I've read). So basically this is either staged or this guy is an idiot.

"I covered this entire planet once."

I didn't know that and doubted it, so I googled. Link says that before around 1 billion years ago, water (ocean) covered 95% of the surface of the earth, and then continents erupted relatively quickly, geologically speaking.

However, I think that 95% coverage figure (and possibly more earlier on?) would mostly be owed to the crust and mantle being relatively flat and smooth after cooling down from being a largely molten ball very early on. Now that the earth has cooled enough to allow plate tectonics to push stuff around and create subduction zones and mountain ranges, there are too many high-elevation points (and low elevation chasms for the ocean to fill in) for the ocean to ever cover the entire earth again. Even if all of the ice on the earth melted, apparently sea level would only rise by about 70 meters / 230 feet.

So the "and I can always cover it again" bit at the end is a bit overstated. We'd almost certainly be dead as a species if conditions were extreme enough to melt all of the ice around the world, but not because of being drowned off of dry land to live on.

Everyone loves the oversteer.

Invisibility isn't a power of the One Ring so much as a side-effect. It shifts mortal wearers a little into the spirit world, so they fade from view in the physical. Sauron doesn't disappear when he wears the ring because he already exists in both worlds and he can see other wearers for the same reason. It's not widely discussed, but this should also be true of other maiar; Gandalf, Saruman and Durin's Bane; and 'high' elves who've been to Valinor: Galadriel and Glorfindel would all also be unaffected by ringvisibility. It's this walking the threshold between worlds that's also responsible for the extended lifespan of mortal ringbearers and why Frodo can see the ringwraiths and they can see him.

The elemental character of the Three, I think, shouldn't be overstated. All of the rings, the One, the Three, the Seven and the Nine are very much alike. They were all made by or under the tutelage of the same creator to the same basic recipe, with independent elven flourishes rather than fundamental differences in the case of the Three. The One has to resonate (musical metaphors are always appropriate for Tolkien's magic) with the others in order to work on them, and that's Sauron's mistake: he is ultimately trapped and destroyed by his ring just as the dwarves and men were by theirs.

Well, Syriza is an acronym for Coalition of the Radical Left (roughly), and everything left of the Berlin Consensus is considered to be radical left. So they are going to call Syriza a radical leftist party until the political landscape itelf has been pulled back towards more leftist positions. But you're right, if they were judged by their positions, they'd be centre-left in theory, if centre-left hadn't turned into corporatism by taking up the Third Way of Schröder/Blair/Clinton.

They are, without a doubt, radically democratic though. As your Grauniad article points out, they haven't turned on their election promises yet, which is quite unheard of for a major European party. Francois Hollande in particular was a major letdown in this regard. Few people expected him to bow down to German demands so quickly. Aside from his 75% special tax for the rich, he dropped just about every single part of his program that could be considered socialism.

Grexit... that's a tough one.

Syriza cannot enforce any troika demands that relate to the programmes of the Chicago School of Economics. Friedman ain't welcome anymore. No cuts to wages or pensions, to privatisation of infrastructure, no cuts to the healthcare system, nor any other form of financial oppression of the lower class. That is non-negotiable. In fact, even increases in welfare programs and the healthcare system are pretty much non-negotiable. Even if Syriza wanted to put any of this on the table, and they sure as hell don't, they couldn't make it part of any deal without further damages to an already devasted democratic system in Greece.

So with that in mind, what's the point of all the negotiations?

Varoufakis' suggestions are very reasonable. The growth-linked bonds, for instance, are used very successfully all over the world in debt negotiations, as just about any bankrupty expert would testify. Like Krugman wrote today, Syriza is merely asking to "recognize the reality everyone supposedly already understands". His caveat about the German electorate is on point as well, we haven't had it explained to us yet – and we chose to ignore what little was explained to us.

Yet the troika insists on something Syriza cannot and will not provide, as just outlined above. Some of the officials still expect Syriza to acknowledge reality, to come to their senses and to accept a deal provided to them. Good luck with that, but don't hold your breath. Similarly, Varoufakis is aware that Berlin is almost guaranteed to play hardball all the way.

Of course, nothing is certain and they might strike a deal during their meeting in Wednesday that offers Greece a way out of misery. Or maybe the ECB decides that to stabilize to Euro, as is their sole purpose, they need to keep Greece within the EZ and away from default. That would allow them to back Greece, to provide them with financial support, at least until they present their program in June/July. Everything is possible. However, I see very little evidence in support of it.

Therefore Grexit might actually be just a question of who to blame it on. Syriza is not going to exit the EZ willy nilly, they need clear pressure from outside, so the record will unequivocally show that it wasn't them who made the call. No country can be thrown out, they have to leave of their own. Additionally, Merkel will not be the person to initiate the unravelling of the EU, as might be the consequence of a Grexit. That's leverage for Greece, the only leverage they have. But it has to be played right or else the blame will be put squarely on Greece, even more so than it already is.

-------
Edit #1: What cannot be overstated is the ability of the EZ to muddle through one crises after another, always on the brink of collapse, yet never actually collapsing. They are determined to hold this thing together, whatever the cost.
-------

Speaking of blame, Yves Smith linked a fantastic article the other day: Syriza and the French Indemnity of 1871-73.

The author makes a convincing case why the suppression of wages in Germany led to disaster in Spain, why it was not a choice on the part of Spain to engage in irresponsible borrowing and how it is a conflict between workers and the financial elite rather than nations. He also offers historical precedent, with Germany being the recipient of a massive cash influx, ending in a catastrophe similar to Spain's nowadays.

It strikes me as a very objective dissection of what happend, what's going on, and what needs to happen to get things back in shape. Then again, it agrees with many points I made on that BBC videos last week, so it's right within my bubble.

I've read that Murray hated, HATED, filming the movie, so it might have actually seemed longer than that to the actor.

That being said, I think the author of this piece drastically overstated the times by doubling many days and assuming our reporter buddy needed to become an "expert" in all things. He spoke a phrase in french doesn't mean he is an expert in French. He knows some pieces on a piano doesn't mean he's an expert in all piano. And he could have taken a few hours of lessons and then grabbed the chainsaw to practice cutting the ice sculpture.

Given how often rally cars oversteer and then hook up again and shoot straight to the inside of the corner, I kind of think there's nowhere actually safe. Maybe the inside before the apex, but that's about it.