I saw a talk on the subject about a year back. It was discussing tokamak reactors, from an engineer working on them. The small ones can’t sustain a break even state, but they are affected by the inverse square law to a larger degree. I believe China is about to start/has started construction on a power station sized test reactor.

The pellet sort are a different type. They have different pros and cons.

Some companies are still trying.

I’ve got a ulefone 27T. It’s the phone equivalent of a tank. It also includes thermal and night vision, and underwater video modes. I would also give it good odds of surviving being used as a self defence weapon.

Downside is it’s a relatively unknown Chinese brand.

They are down to 2 main problems now. The main one is (the cost of) scaling up. Fusion reactors will be more effective then bigger they are. The tiny test ones are already past break even.

The other is wall material. Apparently the radiation has an annoying ability to transmute the elements making up the wall of the reactor. They are working out a material that can maintain its bulk mechanical properties, even with random elements appearing in its internal structure.

Unpicking your personal maladaptations helps a lot. This is how therapy and medication are so useful, particularly in tandem.

Two of my big maladaptations were using stress to drive me through, and berating myself when I didn’t do as well as I knew I could. It turns out that this is quite corrosive to your wellbeing, and that wellbeing is the foundation supporting your self driven. I was consuming myself for fuel.

I’ve gotten a lot better at redirecting my irritation. I don’t get mad at myself for not doing the washing up. I get mad at the washing up for existing. It’s a subtle, but powerful difference. I still do both, far too much, but I’m getting better at it.

Lastly, remember to bask in your glories. We tend to forget to enjoy the results of our effort. We just move on, and so don’t get the dopamine hit. Set aside at least 10% of the time taken to bask and feel proud of yourself. To show off and enjoy. Suddenly your brain has a positive reason to power through, rather than just avoiding a negative.

Think of it as a medieval army forming up. An army didn’t generally march straight into battle. They took the time to organise and prepare. It also acted as an opportunity to intimidate your opponents into backing down.

The protests are the army forming up. Connections are made, wills reinforced and tied to a more focused cause. In many cases, the powers that be recognise the danger this represents and back down. When they don’t, that’s when things escalate.

Protests like this are a necessary part of reaching the goal. They are a link in the chain. People don’t want violence. It will be accepted, if required, but not joyously.

Just remember, in a blunt head to head fight, the enemy would be the US military. You would need to either defeat them directly, or break their will. What would it take to cause large scale defections within the US army? Are people willing to pay that price?

Failing that, the slower, less drastic methods must be employed. It’s a war of psychological attrition, not a fist fight.

Granted.

No wars will never end, unless you personally step in to end them. Minor skirmishes now turn into epic wars of genocidal annihilation. It’s down to you to stop them.

Kids fill you to the brim with love, and drain you of everything else.

It took a few decades, but the dam seems to be breaking well. Mental health is now no more taboo than physical health (at least for the newer generations, in many places). Accommodating your autistic friend, when they burn out a bit, is no more of an issue than accommodating your friend with a busted knee, or the one working on their weight.

Watching the younger generations roll with what would be horrifying to older generations makes me feel better about the future.

There are 2 sorts of ignorance. Incidental and willful. Incidental can be fixed easily, with more information. Willful only look to support their pre-decided views, and so are far harder to change.

Before the internet became a big thing, both were common on topics. We were forced to rely on what we were told. This lead to a lot of incidental ignorance. The internet made it easy to fix this.

The end result is the ratio has changed. It used to be, say 80% incidental, and 20% willful. Now 90% of the incidental is mostly fixed. So it’s 29% incidental, 71% willful. And so looks a lot worse to casual observation.

The Grandma seems the incidental type. Going to a game gave her the information to update her views.

Also to note, the numbers here were pulled from my arse for example purposes only. Actual ratios may vary.

My point is that I fought that structure, tooth and nail. It took a long time for me to realise that I needed it. Choices help, but some rules need to be laid down, whether wanted or not.

As an adult with both autism and ADHD, I partially disagree. Sometimes I really did need beating around the head with a proper, coherent structure.

I’ve slowly learnt to do this myself, but it took a long time to learn.

What is critical is getting a say in the structure. It’s also worth noting that what is critical can be very different to someone with autism. E.g. to an NT, wearing pants, to leave the house is critical. To an autistic person, the colour of them can feel even more important (or completely irrelevant, depending on the aspie). Both must be included in that structure planning.

I’ve not tried tin foil. The insulation seems to be more robust, and it wants to lie flat. It’s also optimised for IR reflection, tin foil isn’t.

Downside, it’s a near perfect blackout material. I only put them up when it’s going to be ridiculously hot, and only on the sun facing side of the house.

You can get wall insulation that is, effectively a stiff bubble wrap made of milar foil. It’s not even that expensive I cut it to match windows, then used suction cuts to fix it in place.

It’s amazingly effective at keeping heat out. During the 45 degree weather, I barely had to use my air conditioner, to have a comfortable temperature.

If it helps, like often attracts like. My diagnosis was delayed because my wife insisted I was normal. It turns out we both have ADHD and autism. 🤷‍♂️ Also, an impressive number of our friend have now been diagnosed as various neurodiversities. It set off a bit of a chain reaction.

I don’t know about the cyber truck specifically, but there is definitely already open source hardware and firmware designed for this. It interfaces with the battery via canbus. It then presents as a standard battery to most solar inverters. I know it definitely works with standard tesla batteries.

That’s common in the UK as well, though mostly in the cheaper supermarkets. A lot of places rely on the honour system, and convenient drop off places.

I’m of the mindset that you can judge a society quite well by how they deal with shopping trollies.

I’ve noticed that people often put in near minimum acceptable effort to go optional tasks. The trick seems to be to make the easiest “acceptable” solution, to be an acceptable one.

Shopping carts are another example. The perfect solution is for people to return them to the front of the store. But that’s too much effort for many. They leave them wherever they can dump it. An acceptable one is to return them to collection points. It’s not optimal, but it’s better, and most people will actually do it.

In the UK, a lot of police love the cameras. It makes dealing with drunks a lot easier. Apparently it’s also extremely satisfying to show them how they looked the next morning. The embarrassment factor is often far more effective at correcting behaviour than a fine.

Basically, don’t trust a police officer that complains about cameras. The good ones have nothing to hide, and quite like the convenience.

Proof has a different meaning in science, compared to layman usage. In science it means absolute proof, and so generally only applies to mathematics.

A good counter example is Newtonian physics. It has/had a massive amount of experimental evidence behind it. It was basically proven. Then a few slight mismatches were found. Those led to both quantum mechanics and relativity. Both disproved Newtonian physics.

As for germ theory. It’s technically been disproven by the existence of viruses, and prions. Both cause infections without germs being involved.

None of that makes germ theory much less useful, just not “proven” in scientific terms.

My house might be tidy… one day… I don’t think it’s been truly tidy in over a decade.