It brought time, to finish the stations and build the aircraft. Given how close the RAF came to being broken, it made all the difference.

A lot of investment went into the RAF. Alongside the chain home radar net to guide it.

Without those, Dunkirk would have been soon followed by the invasion of the UK.

Fully agreed. There’s a huge difference between tactical appeasement, and being cowards. Chamberlain at least knew what he was doing was bad. It was trying to fix it.

American democrats don’t even have that excuse. I also doubt they will fall on their swords for the sake of those coming in who might be able to fight back either.

Appeasement did its job. It gave Britain time to retool for war. He also fell on his political sword, at the end. That let Churchill actually defend Britain, with a clean slate, and the military he had built.

Terry Pratchett captured it well in death’s speech.

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

“So we can believe the big ones?”

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

“They’re not the same at all!”

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”

MY POINT EXACTLY.

Justice is a communal lie. It doesn’t exist. Yet, but believing it it, we can make it real.

First off, have you got HA up and running yet? That should be your initial focus.

There are 3 main options.

• Old laptop

The cheapest option, but only if you have a spare. It doesn’t need that much grunt. You definitely want to check how much power it draws however. It’ll be on 24/7 and the cost of that can mount up.

• Raspberry Pi (or other single board computer)

This is a good “play around” option. It’s one of the cheapest choices as well. Unfortunately, Pis can become a bit unstable down the line.

• NUC, or other mini PC. The small mini PCs are my preferred recommendation. They are powerful enough to do more complex tasks, but power efficient enough to not be problematic. They are also a lot more reliable than the SBCs.

As for other hardware. Z wave is the best, but also more costly. ZigBee is cheaper, and still very functional. WiFi does the job, but needs a bit more planning. I personally use a mix of ZigBee and WiFi.

If you’re buying WiFi hardware, I would try and focus on esp based options (ESP8266, ESP8285, or ESP32). You can replace the firmware in these, with either Tasmota, or ESPhome. I personally use sonoff and/or athom hardware, but there are plenty of other options.

This might help finding appropriate hardware.

https://templates.blakadder.com/

That’s exactly what I do. I also have IoT devices that are still trucking along a decade later. I fully expect them to likely do a decade more.

Both Tasmota and ESPhome provide open source firmware for many IoT devices. They throw up a local API interface that other systems can talk to. Providing legacy support is as hard as using HTML put and get commands.

A lot of the symptoms of that cluster are actually maladaptations. Our brains try and solve 1 problem, but create 2 more. In solving those, it makes even more. It’s part of the reason that they manifest so differently in different people.

Which one do you have, and how have you found performance? Their prices seem in the sweet spot.

The Vision AI S250 seems like an excellent option @£499

There are options around that price, but they have issues.

That looks good, but is completely budget blowing for my little garden. 😩

I’ve heard the wires are a pain and tend to break. I’m definitely erring towards one using GPS.

Definitely worth looking into. I get nervous of online required hardware. It has a tendency to brick.

The inconsistency is the worst but, at least outside America, most customs teams are polite and informative about what is required.

When I travelled to the US, they were constantly annoyed that you didn’t have their exact workflow memorized. That still happened when 2 machines, side by side, had different rules!

Oh, and FYI, some places, like Amsterdam, have it FAR more efficient. No emptying bags, no 100ml limits. Bag and jackets go through the x-ray scanner, you go through the nudity scanner. You’re done in less than 30 seconds.

Conspiracies need to be small and self contained. The more people involved, and the longer it needs to hold, the less likely it is.

E.g. 9-11 being a government conspiracy with 1000s involved in the cover up? Likely false. George Bush getting info about an imminent attack, then having the info buried, since it would be useful? Far more plausible.

In this case, the elite standing in lockstep to cover their own arses is quite plausible. It also fits that the group is already too large to keep the conspiracy contained, and so information is leaking like a sieve.

A mixed group would be better. It shuts down a lot of propaganda spins. It needs to be hard to spin as anything other than patriots Vs fascists (particularly not black Vs white).

As an Englishman, the IRA were fairly critical to the political results. They kept the UK government from running roughshod over the Irish political parties.

The IRA proved they were willing to cross critical lines (bombs aimed at large scale civilian damage on English soil etc). They also demonstrated restraint. They often provided warnings ahead of time. They focused on disruption not casualties. The underlying threat was clear however. If you (UK government) escalate too far, it’s simple to switch from a bomb aimed at destroying a high street of shops, to one aimed at killing a high street of Christmas shoppers.

The end result was that Irish politics stayed in the public eye, and the government took the safer path of negotiating in good faith. No-one was particularly happy with the results, but no-one was excessively unhappy with them either. Often the best you can hope for.

In short, the credible threat is required to keep all parties honest. Most smart governments will see an escalating trail of protests as part of that. Unfortunately, the current US leadership doesn’t seem that smart.

The 2 go hand in hand. The peaceful element provides cover and public cause support for the more militant elements. They also make it harder to concentrate forces to deal with them.

In turn, the militant add teeth to the peaceful element.

An intelligent government acts early, before the militant elements can come to bear. But for best results both (technically all 3, including political) are required.

Another good example are the Irish troubles. The IRA, while prominent, couldn’t “win”. The marches, and Sinn Fein did.

Think of it as a medieval army forming up. An army didn’t generally march straight into battle. They took the time to organise and prepare. It also acted as an opportunity to intimidate your opponents into backing down.

The protests are the army forming up. Connections are made, wills reinforced and tied to a more focused cause. In many cases, the powers that be recognise the danger this represents and back down. When they don’t, that’s when things escalate.

Protests like this are a necessary part of reaching the goal. They are a link in the chain. People don’t want violence. It will be accepted, if required, but not joyously.

Just remember, in a blunt head to head fight, the enemy would be the US military. You would need to either defeat them directly, or break their will. What would it take to cause large scale defections within the US army? Are people willing to pay that price?

Failing that, the slower, less drastic methods must be employed. It’s a war of psychological attrition, not a fist fight.

That is one of the biggest powers of a protest. It lets people know they are not alone. When we know we have backup, we are a lot more willing to act. If enough people act together, even giants fall.