Perhaps this is why I particularly didn’t find the locomotive physics that strange

The reason why you didn’t think it strange is because you don’t know how one works, because there’s multiple things which don’t make sense otherwise.

The drive wheels are not the ones at the back but the ones with the connecting rods and piston rods (the pistons provide the drive force). The rods are placed in a way which would prevent the wheels turning if connected in those positions and would typically be placed on the largest wheels of the locomotive (i.e. that big wheel should be the drive wheel if it’s going to be there).

The smoke should be coming from the very front of the locomotive as the output from the firebox needs to run through the boiler (most of the front of the machine) in order to generate the steam needed to actually drive the locomotive. Having it come from the back makes no sense unless the whole boiler arrangement is also reversed and it isn’t.

Depending on where you are you might be able to get a road legal one. Talaria and Surron have both sold road legal versions of some of their models here in Australia, I believe they’ve also done so in the UK and I did read something about some US states letting you register them once appropriate lights are installed.

Of course this does require you to treat them as a motorbike and keep off footpaths, have the appropriate licence, etc. Once you’ve got the licence you can ride other motorbikes as well though so I don’t see this as a downside (it’s an enjoyable method of transport and more people should do it).

Technically it’s just that you must show up to a polling location and get your name ticked off, if you really can’t handle voting nobody will know if you drop in blank slips.

If you don’t show up and haven’t done a postal vote you get a letter later on asking whether you had a valid reason to not vote, if you don’t have one then pay the fine.

With an audio track I feel like a well timed bleep can actually make a scene funnier. Doesn’t work as well if you’re trying to play it serious though.

When it comes to text censoring isn’t worth it IMO, at least the type where you blank out part of the word or use a derivative. Everyone can still tell what word you meant so if it was important enough to include then use the actual word. If it wasn’t that important then you don’t need to write the word you’re worried about in the first place - there are other words that can be used for insults or emphasis.

I paid $12 (USD) for a .in and $32 for a .nu with Namecheap, $20 (AUD) for a .au and $59 for a .email with VentraIP.

I can’t really recommend Namecheap though because you can’t count on getting support if you need it. A couple of years back I needed to change my account email with them due to Google being an arse and locking me out of my primary gmail account (namecheap required an email code to log in to the domain dashboard but I couldn’t view the email), put a support ticket in while logged into the same account in their support portal and they ignored me for close on a month. At that point I managed to get back into the gmail account so didn’t need their help anymore, I sent Namecheap back a message saying I was unhappy with their lack of help. About six months later they sent their one and only reply to my ticket, basically saying they were sorry I was unhappy but they didn’t see a problem with the time they took.

I must admit I still have domains with Namecheap because sometimes it’s just hard to get around to changing things, but I was reminded of their lack of competence literally this morning. They sent me an email saying I needed to update my domain contact info so I logged in and went to change it only to find their contact update form is broken and won’t submit…

VentraIP hasn’t given me any issues so far with either their domain or email hosting but I haven’t had to rely on their support so I can’t say how good they are with that.

How does one even start to make a self-propelling machine that cuts wheat stalks at ground level?

You look at a horse-drawn mowing machine like this and start thinking about how you could do something similar without the horse.

Adding a bunch of unsprung weight is a poor decision when it comes to handling though, and that’s something pretty important in a motorbike that’s trying to do more than just low speed commuting. Such a design will also be putting a lot of vibration through the motor components which is not good for longevity. It’s more a case of going for the (admittedly distinctive) aesthetic rather than being sensible.

The picking the bear nonsense was sexist ragebait to start with, if you don’t want people pointing that out then don"t post said ragebait.

Do you have to apply or is it automatic? If automatic I can see potential for another round of eligibility issues in Australia’s parliament coming up - you can’t be a member of parliament while holding another citizenship and unknown/forgotten citizenships have caught people out before.

Between photography, motorcycles, and tools (woodworking/metalworking/automotive) this does seem accurate for me - I have ended up spending a fair chunk of money between these over the years. The tools do mean I can do stuff myself though rather than paying someone else so they at least are less of a money pit.

Every now and then I think paragliding would be an interesting thing to try but I have to tell myself another expensive hobby is hard to justify when I’d like to actually own a place to live some day.

Maybe I’m just sick of this awful platform

Nobody’s forcing you to be here if it’s so awful. You can always try going outside instead or finding an echo chamber somewhere where you can safely ignore the reality of not everyone always agreeing with you.

No, I’d need to think about it. I don’t have a pre-chosen opposite gendered name (it’s not something I’ve thought I needed to consider) and my name is not one that can be easily adapted so the easy option is out.

Not everyone - Christmas trees have always been real ones in my family. If you don’t live near where pines grow you can get a nice Christmas tree from a she oak.

The primary factor is that 120mm is not the actual focal length of the lens in the phone, that will be a considerably smaller focal length that happens to give the same field of view as a 120mm lens on a full frame camera (i.e. the same sensor size as a 35mm film frame). The phone uses a much smaller sensor than this hence the smaller focal length for the same FoV.

Another thing that helps is using a telephoto lens design - including this lets you create a lens noticeably shorter than its focal length.

When the lens would still make an overly wide phone despite all this that’s where the periscope lens design as others have already mentioned comes in.

Wouldn’t these all be, matching the theme of your definition, basic coordination exercises

Correct. I would not expect people to know how to do these things but I would expect a competent person to be able to learn them.

if you couldn’t drive with a manual gearbox, you shouldn’t be issued a license

For people who’ve had a genuine opportunity to learn and couldn’t figure it out then I would kind of support this. If someone can’t figure out a basic coordination exercise then I don’t really trust them to handle the controls of a couple of tons of moving vehicle.

I do realise though that many people don’t have a proper opportunity to learn (no vehicle to do so in or a poor instructor) so most get an exception from this judgement.

All the sounds get mixed together as they approach you (as they compress the same air), by the time it gets to your ear it can be represented by one complex wave.

And you’re commenting in a thread about Ireland, so I used a more relevant example. Nonetheless, I expect even Switzerland has things like country wide default speed limits and has its rural road speed limits set by a group in cities or at least the regional centres rather than each village getting to freely choose its own for the roads around it.

I could see the benefits of using Arch just so almost every function my system has is near-perfectly documented in Arch Wiki.

That is literally the main reason I started using it - over time I kept running across helpful Arch wiki articles while looking for info on stuff so when I got a new computer I figured I might as well go with Arch.

RURAL road is already limited to 60km/h.

That is what I said, yes. The point was that rural people in the same country as this urban change have already had their roads affected by people who don’t live near and use said roads.

Edit: The relevant quote from the linked article:

In February, the default speed limits on rural local roads decreased from 80km/h to 60km/h.