Ah yep, my people. The good ones can cast an indignant parent/kid-free zone up to 15m away. Solitary creatures by nature, they hunt in packs, and if you manage to friend one, you friend them for life.

Smokers. They have decades of being able to strike up an angry conversation in a street with an absolute stranger, whilst never letting it escalate, because, fuckit, brotherhood of smokers.

Plus a healthy appreciation of nature. Sure you can smoke and look at your phone, but you still have to be outside and that means glancing up from time to time to look at the scenery, the night sky, to wave at your neighbours, etc.

Good people smokers, filthy habit.

(Vapers dont count, cos you can’t really share a vape concurrently. Also a lot of them take pride in their devices which I find weird. Real smokers have a decent sense of self-hatred at their habit)

Coulda fooled me

https://archive.is/wVxLV

Perplexity is kinda half-decent with showing its sources, and I do rely on it a lot to get me 50% of the way there, at which point I jump into the suggested sources, do some of my own thinking, and do the other 50% myself.

It’s been pretty useful to me so far.

I’ve realised I don’t want complete answers to anything really. Give me a roundabout gist or template, and then tell me where to look for more if I’m interested.

my pessimism: eventually we will reach diminishing tech gains, or the producers no longer want to compete, and they will form a battery consortium who will deign which batteries are “safe” and “unsafe” and the market will stagnate, eventually giving rise to shrinkflation and we’ll all be left begging for fusion to come in and lower our energy bills