Monthly Archives: May, 2024

Road (Enthusiast) Rage?

Many years ago, we discovered that audiobooks are a wonderful way to make long journeys seem shorter, and seldom does a motorway junction go by without it being accompanied by a snatch of, say, Jules Verne, PG Wodehouse, Arthur Ransome, Neville Shute or Patrick O’Brian.  

Aside: This is one reason why I’m delighted with my latest Tesla software update: as of last week, my car now includes an Audible app, and a single button-press on the steering wheel will continue the current adventure from wherever we left off.  But more about Tesla software updates will follow in a future post…

But if audiobooks aren’t your thing, and you want alternative sources of distraction en route, perhaps you could ponder the history of the numbers of the roads themselves!  This is the topic of a surprisingly interesting blog post by Chris Marshall, talking about UK road numbers like ‘A14’ and ‘B5286’.  

Have you ever wondered where they come from, what the rules are, or who cares about it when the local authorities get the numbers wrong?  Because they do get them wrong, you know, and then SABRE, the Society for All British and Irish Road Enthusiasts swings into action to try to get things put right!

You may feel strongly about this.  You may want to join them and rattle a sabre of your own from time to time.  Then, perhaps, you could join The Milestone Society.  But even if not, Chris’s post will start to educate you, and then you might try searching for your favourite road on the SABRE Wiki!

But not, of course, while you’re driving.

Possibly-related posts:

Well, that seems appropriate.

A couple of days ago, I pointed out that a better name for climate change might be “Global Drenching”.

However, it’s clear that I’m not the only one who is thinking that way.

An article on the BBC website tells me that, in England & Wales, the most popular boy’s name for babies is now, apparently, Noah!

Coincidence? Ha! I think not!

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Rebranding Climate Change

As I look out of the window at yet another rainy day, it occurs to me that we missed an opportunity to get climate change taken seriously.  Here in Britain, ‘global warming’ often sounds rather nice. An opportunity to improve domestic vineyards, perhaps, and make wines here like the Romans used to do.  Or to save on air fares to the south of France… I know some have argued that ‘global heating’ is a better phrase, for just that reason: it’s a bit less cozy. 

But since, for many people, warmer temperatures will mean increased precipitation, I think we should also consider names like ‘Global Drenching’ or ‘Universal Drizzle’.  That sounds more like something we would want to avoid in the home counties, and might spur people to action.

Right.  Action.  I’m off to buy shares in Gore-Tex…

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How to solve ‘range anxiety’

Rory Sutherland has a nice piece with this title in The Spectator.  Excerpt:

As you are reading this, thousands of the world’s cleverest people are spending billions to increase the range of electric car batteries. The reason for this is to reduce a phenomenon called ‘range anxiety’. I suggest that it might be a lot cheaper to reduce anxiety than it is to increase range.

The truth is there is no such thing as range anxiety…

I’ll let you read the rest.

This also reminds me that if you missed Geoff Greer’s review of a gasoline-powered car last year, do go on to read that afterwards!

Many thanks to Peter Robinson for the link to Rory’s piece.

Possibly-related posts:

AI Whitewashing

Yesterday, I asked:

Here’s a question, O Internet:

If I buy full-fat milk and dilute it 50/50 with water, do I effectively have semi-skimmed milk, or is there something more sophisticated about the skimming process?

And if I then dilute it again, do I get skimmed milk… for one quarter of the price?

Now, the quick answer, as I understand it, is ‘no’: milk contains a variety of nutrients, and several of these are water-soluble.  So the process of ‘skimming’ to reduce the fat content doesn’t dilute these nutrients in the way that you would by just adding water: you still get them at approximately the same concentration when you buy semi-skimmed or skimmed milk.

But I learned a couple of interesting different things from asking!

The first thing is this wonderful diagram, found and posted in the comments by Spencer:

Thumbnail of 'Milk products' flowchart

(click for full size)

It looks like something explaining the petrochemical industry, but much, much more yummy.

His comment: “I wonder how many of these I can have with my breakfast today?”

And the second thing is that, as well as beginning “Here’s a question, O Internet”, I could have asked “Here’s a question, O Artificial Intelligence”.  

My friend Keshav did that, submitting my question verbatim to Perplexity, a system I hadn’t previously tried.  Here’s the rather good result (and here as a screenshot in case that live link goes away).

I then went on to ask “Which nutrients in milk are water-soluble?”, and it told me, with good citations, with the comment that “maintaining adequate levels of these water-soluble vitamins in breast milk is important for the health and development of the breastfed infant”.  So I asked a follow-up question:  “Is this different in cows’ milk?”, and again, got a useful, detailed response with references for all the facts.

This stuff really is getting better… at least until the Internet is completely overrun by AI spam and the AIs have to start citing themselves.  But for now,  I think Perplexity is worth exploring further.

Thanks to Spencer, Keshav and other respondents!

Possibly-related posts:

Whitewashing?

Here’s a question, O Internet:

If I buy full-fat milk and dilute it 50/50 with water, do I effectively have semi-skimmed milk, or is there something more sophisticated about the skimming process?

And if I then dilute it again, do I get skimmed milk… for one quarter of the price?

Possibly-related posts:

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