That’s fine. I am a huge Pratchett fan, but I found Banks’ Culture series a very nice read as well. If that tiny bit of description doesn’t work for you? No problem. (My own Best Sci-Fi series is still The Gap series by Stephen Donaldson.)

Years ago I worked at a hot rolling mill. I had my camera with me because they were testing new equipment. It didn’t go as planned, the steel bar did a run out.

In the excellent Culture series (well, those involving ships anyway) the Culture ships are sentient. Each Culture ship has a Mind, an AI *way* more sentient than man. So really, the Minds are active characters in the Culture series, they scheme, interact (both with each other and with humans and aliens from…

No, the claim is that a strong pollutant is in (the aircon system of) cars, which is only a problem when it is not re-captured like it is supposed to be. Still, my point was that, should it leak, it’s only the equivalent of a few thousand miles/km of driving. So, at least in relative terms, R134a isn’t that strong of…

My car has 450 grams of R134a in it’s airco system. Should that escape instead of being siphoned off, that would be the equivalent to 450 x 1430 = 643500 gram CO2.

Metallurgist here.

I’ve never once met a person who said, “I love my electric stove.” Culinary experts and food media alike have always driven home the point that these stoves are supposedly inferior in every way: They don’t get hot enough, and it’s harder to control their heat levels.

Those Feds should be shown around here in The Netherlands... If you want to increase safetly then create dedicated bike lanes.

Balanced, perhaps, by the fact that Citroën does much better in this respect. The Cactus concept car was eerily close to the C4 Cactus we could buy.

Not all PSA/Chrystler combinations are good though...

As a Dutchman, reading that this happened in the town (or city?) of Wiethagen makes me smile. “Wiet” is the Dutch word for “weed”.

Nahh, I can see their point, to be honest.

Nah, a decision implies deliberation and reaching a choice. This is much more like Bad Impulse Control. 

Wouldn’t it be better to use an active laser-based road surface scanner?

It’s as close as we mere mortals can get to looking into the depths of a black hole

And, as I understand it, there is no way to properly and accurately dyno such a monstrous engine anyway.

One could almost say he’s maturing.

Ok, got it for the sensors. As for the training, I must have read a too simplified news item on how MCAS negated re-certification. 

Ok, I stand corrected on the sensors.

What’s much much more ironic is the fact that the old age of the 737 design is what caused this mess in the first place.