Penny wise pound foolish. The only way not to go through the paper is to go through the rolls.

They probably shouldn’t have named it London in hindsight. But back then of course they probably didn’t know they were going to revisit Liberty City/Vice City/San Andreas a couple of times.

There are plenty of over-the-top British stereotypes they could do that the rest of the world would also appreciate. Royalty, Jacob Rees-Mogg/Boris Johnson style politicians, Brexit craziness, chavs, Geordie Shore, empire nostalgia.

GTA is satire about American society. Because of Hollywood, TV, and English being the lingua franca of the world, this way they can reach a far bigger audience. You couldn’t do exactly the same game set in Helsinki because the world knows far less about Finnish stereotypes. Ninja Edit: Random thought about satirical games set in Finland: My Summer Car is kind of that game.

But they have explored London before. I think the UK would probably the best setting if you would.

Alright. I thought I’d missed a controversy.

I know some people complain about GTA Online, but with anything as surplus to human needs as video games I’d say just vote with your Dollar.

Why?

Technically I didn’t, so who is putting words in whose mouth?

The Chinese government are a ruthless immoral authoritarians. Say what you want about economic systems, but fuck authoritarians.

In Europe (in my case the Netherlands, but it’s similar in surrounding countries) you cannot pass on the right and you can get fined for it. If you do pass on the right you’re taking a bigger risk because it is not expected.

You can also get fined for staying in the left or middle lane for too long. But that’s somewhat rare. You can get away with it a bit to pass an extra truck (our trucks speed limit is slower) or if the right lane is full and slower than the lane to the left of it, but don’t drive excessively slow on the left. Especially on the Autobahn.

Borrowing for a car is becoming normalized in my country, but what’s wrong with just buying a €5-10k car outright? My SO and I have spent a grand total of €12500 on purchasing 3 separate vehicles in about a decade.

I drive a relatively new electric car for work that is a job perk, but if I wouldn’t I’d just driving to work in our little Mazda 2.

There is no single part of my house I even want to spend the average new car price on (€43k). That’s retire a year early money.

I’m privileged in that I live in perhaps the country with the densest coverage of EV infrastructure anywhere (except for maybe a microstate or two), but in the 7 months of driving an EV I’ve not once experienced range anxiety.

You can’t do huge roadtrips without a recharge every 250-350km in this relatively more affordable model, but for daily driving it’s like waking up with a full tank every day. If I visit friends 200km away, I just park at a destination charger and walk the last 200 meters.

At least right now that’s is a lot more viable than hydrogen. I can’t fill up in my town. I can fill up near my work 35m away. But it would a hassle.

You kind of get used to it. It’s not as bad as it sounds. At the same time they should absolutely get back to regular buttons. The only thing that should be touch sensitive in a car should be the infotainment screen when it’s displaying Android Auto or CarPlay.

Even then I think I’d like it to be a backup.

Because robots are better than humans.

This is the tech bro answer, but at some point there is no point to enjoy humans to do tasks anymore.

Until then automation will just increase profits roughly within legal limits.

As a three time OnePlus customer I don’t blame them. They were a decent deal each time I opted for them, but I feel no loyalty to them or any other brand I’ve had in-between OnePlus phones.

Like with any corporation, nobody at the company cares about your loyalty as an individual.

And yet you post this in plain text. Interesting.

/s

The reason is the network effect. I want to use signal or rather even an EU based messaging service, but everybody, including businesses, are on WhatsApp in my country.

This will hopefully be something like district heating, so a central heat pump that distributes hot water. I don’t think hydrogen in on the table. They could add a flow battery to capture more solar energy locally but I don’t think that’ll be on the cards early on.

But in reality it’ll probably be a heat pump per home and a big energy bill for us. Our street was built over 50 years ago when natural gas was plenty and cheap so insulation wasn’t much of a concern. We’ve added insulation under the floors and in the walls, but it’s never going to be as well insulated as a modern home.

I don’t want my house to be self-sufficient. I want my street and neighborhood to be self-sufficient. I already use my neighbors excess solar for reasonable prices.

My city wants to be off natural gas in 2030 and my neighborhood is in the pilot to transition first. I don’t necessarily want a huge heat pump attached to my house, and I don’t want a huge energy storage solution in my small garden.

There is city land around our housing block with plenty of room for a solution that can serve the whole street. I hope the city is going to propose something like that for us.

Well, yeah. There are guidelines for new infrastructure, but that doesn’t mean everything is up to date everywhere. There are roads that haven’t been resurfaced for quite a while that aren’t up to date. But on the whole it is very similar everywhere.

It’s only a small country though.

There is a Canadian YouTuber who lives in Amsterdam who makes videos about it: http://YouTube.com/notjustbikes I’ve lived here all my life so it’s nice to get an outside perspective on this all.

This post isn’t about open borders, it’s about the contrast in bicycle and road infrastructure between the Netherlands and other countries. The open border was just the setup.

The Netherlands has very specific urban/rural (re)design standards which are quite recognizable if you know them.