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@Freddy56 wrote "No ideal but it is real and now. Adapt and survive" It's a very similar situation to climate change. As a species we had a choice to reduce carbon emissions or do nothing and learn to live with consequences. We chose the latter and now we wait to see which one will kill us off first.

@Rendel Harris yes. Though apparent motivations of protestors have been ... mixed. And it's certainly *caused* fear and alarm to Jewish groups here. Hopefully the small numbers of Jewish folks attending some protests didn't feel threatened. I'm not sure I'd appreciate a few folks on such protests apparently randomly celebrating the sport of paragliding etc. any more than if a few of the "fair fuel" protestors had been making knowing references to "piano wire" or joking about mounting spikes on bumpers.

@Nigel Garage Of course you were purporting to be speaking (admittedly totally stupidly and without any justification) for disabled people, claiming that they want to "stand on their own two feet" and that they don't want to be given assistance. It's extremely telling that you claim to be speaking for "decent law-abiding citizens", so anyone who wants the disabled to get the help they need is neither decent nor law-abiding? And these people apparently "want an inclusive society without favouring one group of people over another". You can't have an inclusive society unless you make provision for those who need more assistance than others. There was a group in Europe, just under a century ago, who were very keen to emphasise that the disabled were a financial burden on the state, indeed their first steps towards "cleansing" society were to attempt to eradicate this burden. Ever heard of them? Didn't end well.

@tomlew A good point. This opinion piece seems to be complaining about how AI is being used to sell us stuff, rather than using humans to sell us stuff. AI has no impact on me enjoying cycling, how I ride, the people I ride with etc that the article says.

People are hard wired to be lazy. From an evolutionary perspective non-essential activity just gets in the way of our core function: reproduction. This is why people drive half a mile to a supermarket to get a few groceries rather than walk, they're not being lazy in the pejorative sense, they're being 'lazy' because that's our biological programming. This goes some way to explain why there's an obesity problem in a world where day-to-day activity levels have dropped off of a cliff edge as work has become a sedentary activity. What's this got to do with AI? If 'automation' has driven westerners into a sedentary existence - we don't dig, hunt, build or walk miles everyday just to be able to eat - with all the attendant health issues that have resulted, what's AI going to do to people's ability to think when it 'relieves' us of the need to exert some brain power to solve a problem or make a decision?

@Rome73 Actually this particular type of crime isn't localised (though possibly may be in this instance as there are comparatively high-crime areas not far away); of the two main areas for bikejacking, Regent's Park is surrounded by some of the most expensive real estate in the world, and the Richmond Park area is also extremely affluent, the people committing these crimes aren't locals. On a moped with the passenger hefting the bike and willing to ignore speed limits they can be the other side of London in twenty minutes, and if they are spotted by the police they can just drop the bike and escape up alleyways, across parks etc.

@tomlew Absolut! This response hits the nail on the head. The gradual encroachment then hegemony of the mass media has been a creeping sickness for millennia albeit only lately revealed as the omnipresent toxoplasmic mind-plague that it is. Few humans are left who are not utterly possessed by one variety of mad-memeplex infection or another. Consider the historical effects of mind infections such as religions and ideologies. Consider, then, the very similar effects on humans and all about them within an ecology from the various smaller mind diseases such as consumerism, motornormativity and now 1001 utterly ludicrous, but widely believed & acted upon, conspiracy theories, racist prejudies and similar flowing down the mass media rivers like turds in The Thames. No doubt websites like this and others supposedly "serving special interests" will see themselves as a boon to their readers. In fact, they're just another symptom of the general malaise of consumer-rabies. They also enjoy their own Daily Hate Mail variety of heroes and villains, just with a different slant from that gutter press rag's groupings of us vs them. And yet here we are still reading ........ and forming another klutch of daft opinions about things we actually know nothing about, of any truth or cogency.

Or they take it round the corner and bung it in the back of a mate's van, or ditch it somewhere it can be picked up later.

I'm not sure the tens are going to make a great deal of difference, to be honest.

@Defblade yes, but they have to ride the stolen bike back remember. To their manor. And they don’t want to be exposed to arrest for too long by being out and about. You nick it - and it disappears pronto. Plus, they might actually see a 10 mile cycle as a real challenge. Most crime, like this, is localised.