At the very best there are design choices here that are limiting its overall performance in order to make it cheaper and less invasive to install. Similar to a BRT.
It is possible that there is a use case for lower density areas where the lower costs could help make or break a business case.
To my mind though a city or large town is not the use case we know the answer for that and its regular light rail done consistently and coherently across the country to achieve economies of scale (as they have done in France). Sadly, the UK can't get past its ideology that money spent on public transport infrastructure is a waste whereas it is an investment in functioning economies.
I don't think its arrogance just a reflection of the current level of understanding earth systems. We have grown in capacity and reach to be affecting the fundamental systems of life. Those systems have been self-healing but we are causing unprecedented significant and wide reaching change and there's a non-zero chance we will hit positive feedback loops that completely disrupt the mechanisms of life on this planet.
Its a very minor point of disagreement but its just to acknowledge the scale of impact we are making. We've been fooled by how good earth is maintaining life that its less fragile and precious than it is
This is a common reply I see. I'd argue our impact on the very systems of life is now large enough that there's far from a non-zero risk that we do in fact take the systems that sustain life on the planet with us.
So the planet as rock in space is indeed likely to outlive us but the planet as a host of life is less clear cut.
There has never been a species before that has pulled so heavily on the web of life and that's why its even more important to fight with every last breath to try and fight to protect the only source of life we are aware of in the universe.
I am for free public transport from taxation there are some important caveats that would need to be worked out though:
We currently have low capacity relative to latent deamnd capacity (mostly at peak times) and at the moment that is managed through fares. We would need a system that manages demand in another way.
Our transport system is in large need of upfront investment to stop the current managed decline so you'd want a way of making sure that making it free doesn't mean the government is now more limited
Its also worth noting that its unlikely to be a direct swap in of current revenues with additionally required taxes as there are projects that are very costly that could be redirected and any successful mode shift away from cars would also carry a net positive economic effect on the whole treasury.
Potentially in the short term what could help is a 'sunk-cost' ticket similar to the bahnpass where you still pay but do so yearly and get access to any trip anywhere. It makes it more competitive with cars which have massive sunk cost effects which make every trip seem cheaper.
My comment was tongue in cheek. Solar and AC are a good combo.
I'd argue there's still a energy+climate reckoning coming where energy won't be as abundant as it has been and high energy use activities (like AC) will be more challenging. the EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested) of renewables/low-carbon are much lower than peak fossil fuels.
Incidentally I'm the same as you I'm so socialised on sleeping under something I do it regardless of temperature
I think the usual consensus is Linux Mint (and its a solid distro) but I think the best advice is not to be afraid of trying different ones and finding out what works best for you.
Personally, I'm planning additional physical storage of photos off site. Not yet configured but planning for a subset of photos deemed too important to lose to be automatically printed and stored on physical media (DVDs).
In general I'm hoping it to promote a more careful approach to what media really is important to keep.
I think the latest understanding of the impacts from the calibre of nuclear weapons we have now is if anyone is nuked we are all fucked regardless of location but sadly that doesn't seem like enough of a deterrent :/
They did and I'm not against it in principle but it did read a bit like I understand this better than neuroscientists because its just like computer systems and my understanding from neuroscientists is that these sub systems they outline in papers are highly contested and more like how you would model their function rather than actually how they work.
The one thing they seem to say consistently is that the analogy to computer systems work is flawed and the brain works very differently but it's very far from anything I understand so take that with a pinch of salt.
At the very best there are design choices here that are limiting its overall performance in order to make it cheaper and less invasive to install. Similar to a BRT.
It is possible that there is a use case for lower density areas where the lower costs could help make or break a business case.
To my mind though a city or large town is not the use case we know the answer for that and its regular light rail done consistently and coherently across the country to achieve economies of scale (as they have done in France). Sadly, the UK can't get past its ideology that money spent on public transport infrastructure is a waste whereas it is an investment in functioning economies.