Sorry Dave, I’m deleting that because it sounds like some Facebook bullshit and Comic Sans.
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It’s an actual thing,
I think it’s a good idea, but has some teething problems at the moment, such as it’s too easy to activate by accident and then hard to turn off.
But, yeah, comic sans.
OK, I will undelete it, then you can all laugh at the font. 
Just reminds me of some Black Mirror/The Circle bollocks.
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Boo! I’m taking back the like for deletion on grounds of Comic Sans then.
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Bench work scientists, even applied scientists are above that!
Not long after the first lockdown, the press got its teeth into a single study of the effect of lockdown on air pollution, whose findings were interpreted by them as “effect = minimal”.
As we all know the press doesn’t read scientific articles at-source, in full, and even if they did, most journalists are not equipped to interpret them properly, aaaaand even if they were - they’ll be edited down to meaninglessness in pursuit of intellectual lowest-common-denominators.
Two days ago, a more wholistic study, utilising innovative methods and rationale, was published that finds that in fact the intuitive notion that reducing traffic movements does indeed very significantly reduce harmful vehicle-derived pollutants (notably, nitrogen oxides), while having a much smaller overall effect on CO2 output (e.g. central heating turned-up at home, &c.).
Interestingly, 34% of domestic heating in the study area (Innsbruck, AT), is heavy oil, (outputting ~25% more CO2 and >70% more nitrogen oxides than natural gas), suggesting similarly-configured studies of UK cities - where heavy-oil heating is rare - would show greater gains during lockdown. It also (implicitly) supports the notion that domestic power needs to switch to (sustainable) electricity. That, and a move to working-from-home wherever and whenever possible, could significantly contribute to eventually halting global climatic change.
Which is nice.
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Sustainable leccy works certainly. But if you’re going to substitute electric heating for gas on CO2 grounds then it wouldn’t work if the electricity were to come from a fossil-fuelled plant. They’re less than 50% efficient, then there are the transmission losses. So a lot more CO2 would end up being generated.
VB
We’ll soon have a hundred mini nuclear plants dotted around the country. Once we’ve covered the Ridgeway in wind turbines and tapped into the Bristol channel and Morecambe bay tidal energy we’ll be sorted.
At £1.5Bn just to buy each one I can’t see that happening in a hurry.
Have rolls Royce published s price? Is it not as cheap as they were making our originally, what a surprise!
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Yep, makes me suspect they aren’t exactly small either. Apparently they can’t reuse the submarine power units as they don’t have the infinite cooling of the oggin available on land… so it’s a different design
Submarine plant is completely unsuitable and was never considered. However RR did make the case that Mass production of smaller civilian plants would bring cost benefits. Hey ho time to block up them estuaries.
Goodness that has brought back memories. His outcomes were little short of remarkable, his methods unorthodox but effective and he was viewed as a maverick by many in the profession. He believed totally in his methodology and the disbelievers questioned their objections to his treatment regimes when he departed, once his success rate was realised. I met him on a couple of occasions, a good man with total commitment, initially of course I didn’t agree with him but his results did eventually win me round. By that time he’d been hoofed out, I often wondered what had happened to him.
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Tim Hunkin of the Secret Life of Machines has a new video about drive systems (chains and belts). Like his 2d plasma cutter.
Thanks to MJS on pfm for the link
Received an email (Automated?)from Wigwam admin last night advising me that my account appears to be inactive and that should I wish to continue the account please log in…Got around to it this morning only to find my account had been deactivated already… 
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No doubt I’ll be getting a similar one. 
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Much to my surprise, my login there still works. The last time I used it was years ago to buy a SUT.
I flounced and asked them to delete my account and posts after they allowed people back in who had been banned for being racist
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