Love the word "boffin". I think we should use "pundit" more often as well.

TheRegister - like, say Viz - likes its lazy, outdated journalistic stereotypes and tropes.

That's not being critical of them; its their humour, they mimic the crassness and condescension of tabloid journalism, particularly that of the 70s and 80s (even tabloids have moved on).

When you see cliches like boffin, nanny state, egghead etc etc in a HN title, you can be reasonably confident its El Reg.

As soon as I saw this word, I guessed that El Reg was the source.

Guess it went pear-shaped!

> Majorana particles, subatomic particles that scientists have not observed directly.

i expect they're looking for Majorana quasiparticles

im surprised it's still around. i remember reading it in the late 90s.

I was surprised to see it - I thought "boffin" was good-natured but highly irreverent, like "nerd". But I can't imagine any publication writing the headline, "Computer nerd claims Microsoft's supposed quantum leap does not compute."

"Good natured but highly irreverent" is pretty much The Register's house style.

To be fair, "boffin" usually implies someone has relevant (usually scientific) expertise, but nerd doesn't. Henry Legg has the relevant credentials to give weight to his claims, he's not just some random basement nerd.

It's typical of the Register. They always use the word "boffin" for expert/scientist. It's a british word used to describe a clever person.

Roughly interchangeable with egg head I think, although more used and slightly more endearing.

Used in WW2 to refer to radar engineers, bouncing bomb designers etc

The Register is highly irreverent, as a rule.

Completely unrelated but I'm always sad that Umbra, Penumbra and Equinox aren't used very often in day-to-day speech, very cool sounding words.

Also, adumbrate.

There is also a political aspect to this. Reid Hoffman is a big democrat donor and hater of Trump, going so far as to funding a law change so Trump could be privately prosecuted for sex offences in New York.

Which is ironic, because Reid was a friend of Epstein and visited his island.

Honestly, go back to the Liz Truss plan. She tried to speed run implementation, but policy-wise it was all there.

And also ignoring that whole Rape Gang thing.

>>There have been intermittent stories of planning, FSA and trading standards personnel being threatened by armed gangs in the last few years which is an indicator of some new severe gaps in state capacity.

Yes, chiefly immigration policy.

Getting constantly distracted by foreign-policy items 90% of voters barely care about is how the UK wound up in this mess.

Oh agreed. If anyone cares that much travel back to whichever country they support and enlist. Also renounce your British citizenship at the same time.

I practically beelined to Ukraine when the war broke out and dedicated a good 2 months to humanitarian work. I've probably achieved more independently than huge organised movements with probable nation state backing.

Huge amounts of funding, huge election talking points, hundreds of thousands of people, entire student bodies, propaganda networks, and what quantifiable achievements have been made? It all comes off as a preformative social occasion with 0 goals.

Have far more respect for those who put their money where their mouth is and actually joined ISIS than the professional protestor caste.

I always think of the example of my step-grandad (amongst others) who left the UK to join the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.

Well Starmer had a massive majority and could have got whatever was needed passed to sort out public finances, but his MPs rebelled (or he chickened out).

There isn't that easy a fix. Since Brexit "cake and eat it" lies, and "fuck business" deal (both Boris quotes), business has been a bit well, fucked. Hence high debt, poor economy, seven different prime ministers as people thinking sticking a different person in no 10 will make the screwed trade deals and huge debt magically cease to be.

He was elected to ensure nothing corbyn worked for would succeed, and in that sense he was perfect.

I think economics would have ensured that nothing Corbyn worked for succeeded.

We'll never know, because Britain hasn't pretended to give a shit about its citizens in generations

Sounds safe: https://ciceroinstitute.org/news-media/more-than-50-of-homel...

"In 8 states, over 50% of unsheltered homeless individuals are registered sex offenders.

National average: ~13% when including those with “unknown addresses.” "

Buried lede: this is, in large part, a self-created problem. Many states set restrictions on where people who are registered sex offenders are allowed to live (e.g. disallowing them from living close to schools and day care centers), and those restrictions can make it much more difficult for these people to find housing.

(Anecdotally, I've heard of situations where these restrictions effectively ban sex offenders from living anywhere in a city, because the overlapping exclusion zones leave nothing uncovered.)

I could see that happening. This idea isn't perfect, but beats the alternatives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_Village

You act as if reacting to global warming is cost-free. It would have a drastic impact on the economy and people's standard of living, especially in the 3rd world.

You act as if NOT reacting to global warming is cost-free. It WILL have a drastic impact on the economy and people's standard of living, especially in the 3rd world.

Yes I literally copied your comment, added a single word and modified another; it's that easy to rebut.

It's a bad rebuttal. What can an individual do besides vote? I already drive an electric car, I vote for candidates who promise to fight climate change, and I've been a vegetarian for over 7 years. I'm about maxed out on my negative carbon foot printing, so getting anxious over stories like this seems unproductive at best. I can't be worried about that shit.

What makes it bad? Kudos for at least trying, though I'm not sure driving an electric car helps, unless your power station uses hydro power or another renewable source to provide that electricity. A bigger gain/sacrifice in that regard would be to use public transport, or at least carpool, as often as possible so there's less energy overall being used.

And one person didn't cause the situation we have now; many did. And it'll take huge collective action to move the needle in the positive direction.

> Kudos for at least trying, though I'm not sure driving an electric car helps, unless your power station uses hydro power or another renewable source to provide that electricity. A bigger gain/sacrifice in that regard would be to use public transport, or at least carpool, as often as possible so there's less energy overall being used.

I live in rural Iowa where public transport doesn't exist. But the good news is 65% of the state's electricity comes from wind energy, and my own municipal utility has a tiny solar farm too.

> And one person didn't cause the situation we have now; many did. And it'll take huge collective action to move the needle in the positive direction.

Others are chastising OP for not being concerned about every piece of breathless, anxiety-inducing climate change news, but an individual can't do anything to change it except make a couple of tiny changes and then stop worrying.

Edit: I don't mean to be combative, I largely agree with your overall point. I shouldn't have said your rebuttal was bad, I was up too late last night when I left that comment.

Well, it's not really a rebuttal, is it? When choosing a path to take we need to be clear on both the climate benefits and the economic disbenefits (or vica versa).

Exactly the kind of thinking that's gotten us to this point. What happens when that which benefits the climate continually "disbenefits" the economy, or vv?

Then we should let the electorate make a fully informed decision about whether they want to definitely reduce their standard of living for some estimated/modelled future climate issue (none of which have come true to date), bearing in mind that it makes no sense for EG the UK to do it if China or Russia don't as we are just rounding errors on their polution.

> estimated/modelled future

Would you also like to take a highway stroll[0]?

> China or Russia

Why look toward them to make a first move? What do you think happens when everyone keeps looking at everyone else to make the first move? Pretty sure there was/is a rush to be first to accessible fossil fuel deposits, and first to build infrastructure exploiting those deposits. How about making that move first to fix things because it's the right thing to do, and set an example that others can then actually follow? Or is it better to just keep watching and exploiting and let it all burn and flood, because that's a "future concern"?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48528356

This isn't that hard to understand. If you have ever gotten in your car after it has been parked in the sun, you know about the greenhouse effect. That CO2 does the same thing isn't some weird mystical thing. It's basic science. We know exactly how the causation works.