I lease it. It costs me the trivial sum of £100 per year. It's a drop in the ocean.

I'm a retailer in a country that has had chip & pin (as it's called here) for ten years, and contactless NFC cards for four or five years, and I can categorically tell you that you are absolutely 100% flat out wrong. Every single thing you've said in this thread is categorically untrue, and I haven't the faintest idea where you would get these ideas, other than straight out of your ass.

In the article is says the engine is designed for Boeing 777X's. Wikipedia says that the 777X won't have an option of engines from different manufacturers due to the expense and diminished efficiency of making a plane compatible with more than one engine, which possibly implies that this engine is bespoke to those planes and might not be as a good a fit for other platforms.

i remember getting the old fogey hate treatment in the early 90's when it was all "generation x'ers are zombified by their tv and their video games". as it is every generation..these delinquent kids with their Elvis and their Hula hoops...etc etc

I agree that the euphemism treadmill does seem like a perpetual losing prospect, it does seem to be that each euphemism is just a fresh label that will eventually collect the baggage of the previous label.

But I would argue that referring to a person as "a person who has (x characteristic)" or a group of people as "people who have (x characteristic)" is a way of talking about people in the context of the relevant characteristic without removing the crucial context that they are a human being the same as us regardless of that characteristic. I think that sort of terminology introduces some resilience against the treadmill.

I also don't agree with terms that are less accurate, or introduce ambiguity. "people who have immigrated illegally" or "people living in this country illegally", or "a person who entered the country illegally" for instance are no less accurate than "illegal immigrants" or "an illegal immigrant". Another poster on the thread was arguing that it is a way to avoid holding people accountable for their choices, a way of avoiding accusing people of things, but I don't believe that's inherently true. As i suggested to him, in the context of talking about holding people to account, you can add more context such as "people who chose to enter the country illegally" for instance.

Naturally this isn't just about illegal immigration, i think it's a constructive way to approach any social issue, but as you say most of those issues have a practical, logistical problem creating them that needs to be dealt with for the problem to be solved. I think we have a much better chance at finding the correct solution when stay grounded to the humanity of everyone involved.

That's what I'm arguing for. Talking about the choice, not talking about a person as if they are nothing but that choice. "People who chose to illegally enter the country" for instance is a term that is explicit, and conveys the facts of the matter accurately, and doesn't blur any lines about what has happened or who is responsible. The term "Illegal Immigrant" while perfectly accurate in terms of categorising the legal status of the individual, omits the reminder that these are people being discussed, not cartoon villains. This might seem infuriatingly mealy mouthed and unnecessary, but the in-group out-group instincts that are the root of every descent into inhumane behaviour are compulsive. Choosing to use more specific language as a means of regulating this instinct is not a counterproductive thing to do. It's just reminding us all collectively, to stay rational and not let our sense of injustice amplify our aggressive instincts.

This strokes me as an odd conclusion to come to. What do you mean by open borders? Like, no passport control whatsoever and just anyone can come and go as they please? I can't imagine there are very many people at all that would want something that chaotic and unregulated. I can't speak for other people, but I personally believe that people who enter a country illegally obviously should be taken back out of the country and sent back to their home country. There are situations where people are fleeing famine or a warzone where the situation become less simple and I do believe that as human beings, such people deserve some other fate than being sent home to die, which obviously means arriving at some compromise. I certainly don't want open borders and no control over who is able to claim welfare. I can't think anyone liberal/PC that I know that would want that.

And let me be explicit: Just because I believe careful use of language can mitigate some of the counter-productive wiring in the human brain does not mean I think that people should not be held accountable for their choices or that as a society we shouldn't criticise the values people hold or the behaviour they engage in.

I have no idea what you're talking about. I think you're projecting a tone onto what I'm saying.

The trouble is the term "bank robber" possibly carries some unsubstantiated implications, and is a placeholder for subconscious caricatures. For example it conjures up an image of someone who habitually robs banks. If you're an accomplice in a bank robbery when you're 18, but you get caught, reform your character and never rob a bank again, being referred to as "a bank robber" gives an unwarranted impression that you're a career criminal.

On the other hand "man who robbed a bank in his youth" is more factual and precise and carries no inherent implication, other than those that stem from the facts, as would "man who has a history of regularly robbing banks" if that was true.

In both cases, the consideration of this person is contextualised as a human being that should be dealt with appropriately, and not a cartoon villain that can comfortably be disregarded as deserving no opportunity for redemption.

As it said in the summary, referring to illegal immigration rather than illegal immigrants is an effort to avoid labeling people. While it is a technically correct description, there is more to language that technical specificity and precision. When discussing politically and emotionally charged subjects, labeling people as "a something or other", especially when referring to a group of people serves to subconsciously dehumanise them in the minds of the reader. Labelling people enables a cognitive shortcut that prunes any human attributes outside those implied by the label, and transforms them from "a human like me with complex motivitations and someone whom i could empathise with" to "outsiders that aren't like me and could be a threat and doesn't deserve any empathy, because all they are is [whatever label]".

It's important to careful avoid promoting lazy stereotyping, even on as seemingly innocuous a level as carefully avoiding some terminology because we are all chimps with buggy reasoning software installed, and we need to work around the bugs as much as possible.

Region free or unlockable players have been around since the late 90's. How can you not know this?

On top of not buying a Samsung TV, you have to spend the rest of your life having a heightened situational awareness of what model of TV is in the room with you, and refusing to speak in the houses of any of your friends who buy a Samsung TV. Or more realistically, just boil like a frog and forget about it after a few months.

Yeah 100K is utterly absurd. You can buy an overhauled original for less than half that. Mine still needs a lot of work hence my surprise at it going the distance on my trip - some people use them as daily drivers and don't have any problems because everything is fresh and well maintained. Them all being 35 years old introduces a whole slew of other problems that would plague any other 35 year old car, but much less so for the ones that aren't just sat around.

mine sat around for 15 years and the interior is fine, except the leather on the seats shrank.

The more you drive them, the more reliable they become because you get forced to replace or service things as they start to fail. After a while the failiure rate drops off and the car gets pretty reliable. They do have a lot of quality control and design issues but you find yourself rectifying them as you go. It's a very good "hobbyist" car as you end up learning how every part of it works and every part of it seems to have been the product of some unorthodox design decision so it's quite interesting. I drove mine on a 200 mile road trip recently and was astonished and gratified to find that it just worked all the way there and back. I imagine these new ones come with all the uprated replacement parts that most old deloreans gradully get refitted with. 100k is crazy money though. I paid 7k for my project car ten years ago and now theyre going for 30k plus. I wouldnt pay that for one.

They have hydraulic brakes front and rear. The handbrake is cable operated though, but that wouldnt stop you from slowing down. Incidentally, even if you do apply the handbrake it doesnt work properly because of the shape of the brake pads. Unless you spend time chamfering the pads to the right shape it will alway roll backwards.

The interior trim is sort of fake leather effect vinyl. The front of the seats is actual leather. The fake leather stuff has hard foam sprayed onto the back of it to keep its shape. There's very little hard molded plastic as such in there. Around the steering wheel where the ignition barrel goes is moulded plastic. I cant think of anywhere else in the interior that isnt more upholstered than moulded. The knobs and switches are all plastic. The dash is a sheet of metal set into the fibreglass underbody with one of these foam back fake leather panels bolted on to it.