I was just in New Zealand and made a discovery. For light switches, up is off, and down is on.
We don’t flip switches up to turn them on, we flip them north.
Good theory, but it doesn’t hold up. Up is off in China, too.
Hang on Japan goes side to side, or at last in my neck of the woods.
But up isn’t north no matter where you are. It’s to the sky…
The only side to side switches I’ve seen in Japan are in fairly new/refurbished houses and apartments. Everything else has been up for on or remote controlled.
Really my gaff is fairly old and has side to side. Then again I’m in bogglin nowhere so heavens knows whats normal.
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Speaking of New Zealand:
Roses are Red,
The Sheep jokes are Many,
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I haven’t been around Gifu that much, but that’s what I’ve noticed. It seems like, at least for lights, pull cords and remote controls are much more common than switches. This is including some deep inaka in Kagoshima and Hokkaido (the latter I’ll be revisiting this July as it’s beautiful for summer cycling).
I might even be in the Tokai area for your rock hauling festival this summer depending on how much humidity I want to deal with (I was there last summer, but the typhoon kept me mostly indoors).
New Zealand seems like the chillest country ever, at least looking from the outside.
It is a super chill country. To borrow and paraphrase a line from Mr Regular, Australia and New Zealand are the planet’s bonus track.
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Unsurprising story: The CEO of an Automotive company thinks that humans should and will always be allowed to drive on public roads, and vows that they’d fight any legislation that tried to make it otherwise.
Surprising twist:It was the John Krafcik, CEO of Waymo, the pioneering company and still industry leader in Self-driving cars.
That’s not that surprising. I’m pretty sure the road to full self driving is paved with reassuring gearheads they will still be able to drive around on a sunny day until it no longer matters what the remaining few drivers think.
You know how I know you didn’t read the article?
And hey, they can say it all they like. Frankly, I don’t care if they’re lying when they say it, either, after all, it can’t be any less of a lie than when they say self-driving cars are just around the corner, are coming soon, three months maybe six months definitely, maybe next year, maybe five years, etc. It won’t be a problem for a while.
to be honest I diddn’t notice there was a link.
OK after reading the article it still doesn’t really change anything? People who think that we’ll always have the option to just drive your fancy car around on public roads, I don’t think it will pan out. Ultimately it doesn’t matter how much someone wants to go sunday driving in a rare car. Even if every other car on the road is self driving and can avoid your dumb human ass… there’s still the issue of your dumb human ass potentially driving your 911 into a crowd of people or into the side of a tanker truck or a median or in some way just causing more chaos than you would have otherwise, and disrupting the taxpayers’ roads and potentially killing people. I don’t see it surviving public outcry for anyone to still be a driver.
Well, OK fine: I’m sure in the automated driving future if you get an incredibly rare and expensive drivers license and are rich enough to pay the extreme insurance costs of being a human driver, and do the background checks and all the other stuff, yes; you’ll get the option to drive your fancy car on certain public roads, provided good conditions.
But overall as soon as it’s economically viable to go to almost all automated cars on public roads, I’m pretty sure car owners will be relegated to the same status as gun owners are today.
To me the time it takes to get there doesn’t really matter.
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I see on twitter and tumblr people asking for financial help after other people clearly dicked them over - stuff like room mates stealing their stuff and the cops don’t do anything, or not being paid for services they provided or people backing out of deals. And while this may be helpful in the short term, it seems like no one know what small claims court is and that it’s not expensive or difficult to do to make people answer for their actions and get their stuff back or compensation. I feel like there ought to be something to make people aware that there are avenues of redress beyond the police that are available and accessible to anyone.
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We probably will have to go to small claims court for costs incurred after asshole neighbor’s unleashed dogs attacked me and brand new puppy last year. Lawyer told us that even if small claims rules in our favor actually getting the money is a different story and not guaranteed.
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That’s true, but there are mechanisms in place to collect. In Virginia you can have the court garnish their wages or even seize personal property and sell it to pay for the judgement. It’s more paperwork but it can be done. Also I am not a lawyer not legal advice yadda yadda.
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Maybe it’s just my privileged white-maile-cis-het-ness or maybe it’s the fact that I look the part of a yuppie with something to prove, but every dispute of this nature I’ve ever been in has ended with the mere threat of small claims court.
The fact that I knew what it was and was prepared to use it was generally enough to bring them to the negotiating table. After that it was handled like reasonable adults.
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Heck, one time, my now ex was about to be stiffed by someone who was a law professor for web site work she did. I had her mention small claims court and the professor immediately, albeit begrudgingly, paid what she owed.
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