Night raids would have cut losses markedly and achieved no worse accuracy.

Speculating wildly here, we don't know the Neanderthals didn't ritualise the activity into a dance or an act to retain some of the process as well as the words. As we do with dancing, martial arts, even theatre or early stages of ancient apprenticeships. That might transmit the muscle memory of golf or stone tool making -- without the practised skill. How far that remains applicable using a stick in place of a golf club, or pine cone in place of a lump of flint is impossible to guess, but puts you closer than mere words.

I have to assume they wouldn't suffer the Wikipedia tendency to explain the technical so technically perfect (including all obscure jargon) that it's often bordering on impossible for an intelligent outsider, deeply skilled in other technical fields, to follow. :)

Imagine explaining a complex process, using language carefully structured to be memorable, to the next generation. Then spending hours repeating, testing and checking their recollection over the coming days and years to ensure their memory is as yours. Rather like rote learning of tables and other "modern" learning. 2x2=4 doesn't become something else that way.

Each generation gets a complex story they may not see the applicability of, but if it's evolved to be important in the culture to remember, maybe they figured ways to remember until it is useful again. Africans did, pre-Medieval Europeans did, and for the longest period known, aborigines did. Why not these?

Here's a story I remember reading recently: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-16/research-gives-merit-...

The key takeaway from all I've seen is it's not just telling stories, but like some of the more recent pre-literacy Western oral traditions, is more like a formal passing on, testing, repeating to ensure the message is passed on accurately.

...unless there are plans for profit and charging a subscription or some such.

We just about eliminated the electricity component of the typical UK supply of electricity and gas for heating. That's not net zero, or creative accounting, that's actually eliminate use of grid electric for nine or ten months, with a little use in winter. That only because of switching water heating to the panels, that was previously on gas. We're in N Cumbria.

I include Norway as we're talking about Europe, and there are two interconnects coming with the UK -- one in progress, one planned, and other EU-Norway links coming. UK has about 5 others in progress to Netherlands, Ireland and elsewhere. There's loads of new interconnects in the pipeline within the EU and to surrounding. I've even seen Iceland in one interconnect proposal, which was somewhat surprising. Proposed interconnects to N Africa less so. There's lots of suitable onshore sites too, mainly in spots where other uses of the land are limited.

Politically not at all unthinkable though -- think of most nation's reliance on imported coal, oil, and gas, much of it for generation. That's more risky. Two way interconnect agreements are much less risk by comparison to import only, often from volatile oil and gas states. Reduced reliance on imported fossil energy is one of the big reasons it's heading that way and started in the first place.

The only thing that matters is getting the right mix for the local conditions, and a grid capable of managing the rising amount of generating sources properly, and smartly. So far the grid's side of things is being done pretty well, and is pushing and promoting faster renewable adoption. The Westminster political part not so much.

Wind can provide the bulk of regional need, but clearly can't ever be 100%. The resulting mix also has to allow for keeping the lights on in once in a century conditions as well as normality -- an increasing challenge with changing climate.

Sure it's a lot of PR, but it's not just empty PR with a grid that's controlled mainland wide, and chooses sources minute to minute depending on availability, demand and price it's the best they can do. Scotland can, and does, encourage a much healthier approach to the adoption of renewables than Westminster. With more powers to the regions outside London, including Holyrood, so much more could, and would be done.

You can make the same criticism for every use of home solar panels, of green suppliers, of the whole transition to sustainable, and even of the entire markets for gas and electric considering we can't segregate individual electrons and atoms.

It's kind of hard to get Scotland figures alone because there is no separate Scottish grid, nor interconnects as such, just the mainland National Grid encompassing the three mainland countries. It's accounting, but it's not silly, it's the market we're all forced to participate in. We could have more precise regional figures with regional grids with interconnects between. We're not really large enough to need or justify that. Scottish independence, if it ever comes, might well see a Scottish grid as separate entity.

I simply don't understand why just about everyone on HN who argues against renewables presumes 100% solar, 100% wind, 100% whatever. Every nation will have an appropriate mix for their differing conditions -- isn't that obvious? Apparently it's really not. Interconnecting to nearby nations to move mainly westerly wind power eastwards, and mainly southerly solar northwards. Yet it's still worthwhile for Romania to be adding wind generation. It's still worthwhile for England and Scotland to add solar.

No one is expecting one nation to actually supply the whole of Europe -- grids are becoming more localised and far smarter within the European super-grid that's aiming for continent wide management. The UK is already seeing moves to demand shifting, and localised demand. We'll see far more of that fine level demand shifting, managing in-home batteries and grids managing ever more generating sources to keep to the best mix of sources at any given moment. Right now they do a fine job as you basically never realise the grid is even there, yet the mix of sources varies across every day throughout the year. How Orkney power companies manage it gives an idea where we're heading.

There's a lot of new interconnects in the pipeline across all of Europe too -- UK has 5 or 6 new ones coming soon. Scotland is progressing to new pumped storage of similar size to Dinorwig, though I'm not sure where in the approval process that currently is, or if it'll ultimately be rejected.

We'll all keep some generation of last resort -- right now, in the UK that's coal. It comes in as less economic than interconnects most of the time. There's a few (three or four IIRC) remaining coal plants, all of which are spending 99% of the time idling. Doing absolutely nothing but being ready for spin up. In five years all the coal will be closed, and it'll be the gas plants at the bottom of the heap. It's already uneconomic to build new gas.

If you have his log book, a drop would be recorded by pilot and bomb aimer, but I'm not sure if that would be required for a gunner. Failing that if anyone in the family remembers their squadron # or plane's code (RAF were 3 letters -- 2 letter squadron code and 1 letter aircraft ID, so easy to remember and they'd usually fly the same plane each time), or has any bits with his service number, either will help narrow down an archive search and correlate with records.

The RAF museum have had several projects gathering anecdotes, and adding personal details to their formal archives, and an extensive research section.

I'm sure there's equivalents for the USAF, maybe through their museum in Dayton, OH? I'm sure both RAF and USAF museums are used to dealing with history enquiries and may be able to point you at other resources that may help.

Europe has some of the best spots on the planet for wind generation. Winds are in many places, a near constant companion, and usually within the range that turbines prefer. Any one of Britain, Ireland and the Nordics could supply a huge proportion of Europe's power needs with fully developed offshore wind. With a slim chance of ever being becalmed. Together I wouldn't be at all surprised to find generation capacity above European needs. There's plenty of suitable onshore sites too, and plenty of other European countries not yet mentioned.

Solar is never going to generate as much per panel in Scotland and UK as in California or Saudi, but it's good enough to pay well economically and in terms of emissions and overall impact too. Why wouldn't we use it in the mix? There's plenty of roof space doing nothing else.

New hydro has less scope, but there are suitable sites, and a large selection of locations suitable for pumped storage -- some of them part prepared by already having a lake in a disused quarry!

So they can monitor total renewable generation, and total consumption, but can't have influence on what the shortfall is made up by. I've no doubt the grid will move toward more locality as it redesigns for a smart grid suitable for 100% renewables, and Scottish independence might provoke formal interconnecting.

For now they are both in the same 'house'.

Edit: I find myself newly suspicious of that site's agenda as he links to Watts Up With That, a notorious and extreme denialist site in his blog role. His phrasing may have been carefully chosen to downplay and minimise the achievement. He seems to have a fair time in the oil industry from his about page.

1988/9 First ISPs and connections outside academia

1993 Eternal September, AOL let the great unwashed out on to the net. Damn annoying for six months or so, but the net recovered.

1994 First spam, and colossal in scale. Two bottom feeding US lawyers filling every usenet group with US Green Card spam.

1995 NSF end their ban on online commercial activity.

First e-commerce kicks off, and it's all a bit hobby-esque, and even large businesses are adopting netiquette habits. Like linking out, providing chatty informative pages for no other reason than "because", etc. Putting an e-commerce order somewhere might get you a lovely long chatty thank you email direct from the owner, or a hand written note in the box. The internet still feels like something remarkably different to meatspace.

By the millennium, the year AdWords was born, as the first dot com boom turned into a full on idiocy fuelled bubble, it was the birth of bait and switch. There's a whole ballooning category of "internet marketers" with gloriously scummy SEO, fraudulent sales tactics, learn to spam better courses and worse. Like all easy way to riches sales, the only way to get rich is with the easy way to riches book, subscription or course parting fools from money.

Now everyone commercial, from the largest 5 world companies down, are internet marketers of the worst possible interpretation of the term. Commerce, scam and affiliate slice forced into everything. Bait and switch all the way down.

So you move into a new house with a grotty, worn out (and possibly only 4 or 8 year old) bathroom, with mould and maybe a tile or two falling off. Now you need to remodel, and most of what's out there is shoddy "replace every 5-10 years" quality, so the cycle repeats. New build homes are happy to install the cheapest shite available so long as it looks OK. Every time someone moves it's just about certain the mouldy, grotty bathroom and kitchen will need a makeover (or a divorce). If they got suckered in to a fitted bedroom you'll need to budget to rip that out too (also built from kitchen units with ideas above their station). :)

The parts of Europe I visit seem caught in a similar game.

Up until the seventies most houses were built with lifetime bathrooms -- one 50s house we lived in still had the tiling and fittings from when the house was built, still looked clean, nothing broken. All we ever needed to do was change taps as they had started to wear, and fit a better shower. A couple of tiles were lifted doing that -- that was revealing. No tile adhesive, all the tiles were mortared directly onto the brick, no wonder none had been lost since new. Not only that, tiles were better and the edges and corners were in the tiles -- none of the awful, easily broken, plastic corner things that appear to encourage mould.

The nicest house bathroom I ever saw was a house that had managed to keep its turn of the century bathroom, with high gloss tiling, original bath, radiator and polished pipes, with the modern additions carefully picked to appear like they were there from new.

Never quite understood how so many got so completely suckered in to such wasteful and expensive short-termism.

Neither I hope, just hard won experience of 40 years of buying stuff, getting things repaired (or not) and talking to the repair people, trying to buy sustainable products, trying to prefer locally made where possible, comparing the product or appliance I bought 35 years ago with its modern equivalent etc. Thankfully for much of that time I've not needed to care too much about price in what I choose, so I tend to prefer the best end of the market -- in search of better quality, which is an increasingly futile expectation as even most premium brands now cut costs to barely better than mid-market.

> Corporations have achieved incredibly affordable production ... Claiming that corporations won't make you ...

Wrong on both a) and b) as it goes. Some searches have been particularly extensive.. :)

This rather comes across as ideology actually, or you're over playing the counterpoint just a little :) There's some very significant downsides to globalisation and the resulting changes in companies. Especially of the huge globalised corporations today who hold portfolios of well known brands, that have no connection at all to their original founders, unique selling points, quality or aspiration. Very different to when those 20 brands were 15 or 20 companies, all competing, most retaining a sense of place, and customer needs were far higher up the priority lists.

I can think of lots of examples, but I'll offer just two that I hope give a representative idea. Obviously there's some generalising here. First something really simple: A kettle.

In 1980 there wasn't as much choice "only" 10 or 20 to choose from in most shops -- no LEDs or internet connections and other pointless gimmicks. Yet at the same time that was a benefit. A company would change the kettle when they had something new -- a better filter, a longer lasting element, etc and only rarely updating for style with new colour or shape options. The shop you bought it from would have the exact same models potentially for years, so they were happy to always carry spare filters, elements (these were usually changeable, even most of the flat base ones -- though that type was still uncommon), and seals at tiny prices. Very good chance most would be made in your home country and only one or two super-cheap imports.

In 2020 there's loads of choice -- every single one of them a short life model, probably changed every year for no reason other than making it look a bit different, and changing the shape of all parts. No shop will carry spares, none still give the option of replacing element, a replacement filter will be offered online or direct from manufacturer for 1/3 to 1/2 the price of the new kettle. The water boils no faster, it pours no better, but it has no chance of lasting a decade or two. When the element goes, throw it away, it's your only option.

Something complex: A fridge and ignoring the switch from CFCs, which was regulated.

The 1970 or 1980 fridge-freezer probably made more noise when running, was unlikely to be frost free. If it was a decent one almost certainly had more insulation than now, so it would warm up far slower, and need to run the less efficient cooler much less often. Overall using the same, or less electric than today, it would no doubt get a terrible rating on the modern efficiency sticker though! Components were discrete so could be replaced individually, and usually quite general to apply to multiple models. Few repairs would need a re-gas, which generally wasn't ever worth it. On the few frost free models, the heater and fan were discrete, and replacing a defrost element was a simple 30 minute repair job and a £5 part. They were apparently built to last forever, including interior drawers and storage, gaining only a mid-life rattle or three.

The 2020 fridge has less insulation, warms faster in the event of fault or power cut, has lots of electronics, but usually with more precise temperature controls. The interiors are better laid out, with a better selection of drawers and storage reflecting our changed habits, but mostly using much more fragile plastics. The compressor will be quieter. BUT... Led particularly by Samsung (who the repair fellow seemed to think the absolute worst for this) are aiming to be entirely un-repairable. As the most extreme example of this, Samsung and others have combined the defrost element (a consumable) into a non-separable unit with the cooling coils. To replace the defrost element, once £5 and 30 min or an hour labour and dead easy to do yourself, is now a £400+ part, several hours of labour, and a re-gas. On a £1,500 fridge-freezer.

Even the once better thought of AEG, Liebherr, Miele, Neff, Stoves etc have cut their products from premium and well made, to mid market or even low end quality -- they just have more features for the premium prices. Maybe, if you're really lucky, they'll last a little longer. They'll not be any more repairable. They'll undoubtedly be playing the same "let's make it a single unit and unrepairable" game. Fair chance they'll also be in a portfolio of dozen brands unconnected with the original factories and retained knowledge. Several decades of reliable use with slim chance of a simple repair visit or two? Pretty much forget it.

Similar applies to just about every category of stuff. Some are worse than others, but the direction is clear, and near universal. The exceptions are becoming very rare, but seem to be those who didn't get the memo to consolidate, globalise, offshore and hold a portfolio of dozens of brands, but just stick to making their core products well. Just as they always did. Maybe adding a few offshored relative cheapies to fill in the gap below their usual high end.