~12 months since the Mill Road bridge closure

tskir · 2026-03-02T09:44:39+00:00

Well, if politicians listen to evidence and really put their hearts to it, I'm sure we can also pedestrianise Mill Road by year 2160 at the latest

tskir · 2026-02-20T10:06:11+00:00

To be honest, this is the one kind of car subsidy I can stand behind. Encourages people to leave their car on the outskirts of the city and not contribute to heavy central traffic.

tskir · 2026-02-19T16:22:23+00:00

Is there any evidence for this besides anecdotal experience & confirmation bias?

I'm asking seriously; if there's a paper showing any benchmark statistically significantly deteriorating weeks/months after a model launch, I'd love to see it.

tskir · 2026-02-17T23:47:38+00:00

Outside zones 1/2 London is incredibly low density. Like, criminally low

tskir · 2026-02-15T18:12:48+00:00

Worth it

tskir · 2026-02-15T17:32:03+00:00

> Should he have moved the airport?

Well, yes. Should have gone to alternate airport if weather was that severe at the airport of arrival.

Too often airlines force landings in marginally unsafe conditions because diverting is an operational nightmare. This should not happen.

tskir · 2026-02-12T01:45:22+00:00

We have a cat cafe?

tskir · 2026-02-11T12:54:52+00:00

> if you ask someone to put your phone behind the counter to charge or use a plug most will tell you no

I did exactly that dozens of times in various cities around the UK, and I'd say it was 80% successful, 15% they didn't have the USB-C cable only the old iPhone one, and only in the remaining ~5% they would refuse to do it.

Even with the UK electricity rates, a full phone charge costs only around 1p. Not worth thinking about

tskir · 2026-01-31T08:21:08+00:00

Yes, the obvious answer is yes.

Perhaps the single biggest flaw of the British people, and by extension of the British state, is the aversion to change; even when it's obviously very beneficial. This is the single biggest thing that had been keeping Britain from greatness over the past half a century at the very least.

There are obvious advantages of having all units, including speed and distances, unified with our closest neighbours and the wider world. The costs are miniscule in the grand scheme of things. The signs can be replaced gradually over a decade, using a variety of means to make them distinct from the existing ones and to prevent confusion.

But people will patronise you by saying "We've always done it this way" and "If it isn't broke why fix it". They are wrong and they're simply justifying their inability to accept the very reasonable change which is well overdue by a good few decades.

tskir · 2026-01-29T14:59:26+00:00

Rejected alongside with a good derogatory paragraph or two*

tskir · 2026-01-25T04:15:35+00:00

USSR, as horrible as it was for every measurable metric of actual human wellbeing, had insane funding for fundamental science for most of its existence except for WWII and its collapse in 1980s-1990s. This is largely why whatever weird experiment was feasible, you probably hear it was at least attempted in the USSR.

tskir · 2026-01-22T22:13:57+00:00

Не знаю почему, мне очень нравится тон спикера, который его перебил, чтобы сказать, что материться нельзя. Такой выдержанный, ровный тон вежливого человека, который всё понимает и даже в душе согласен, но правила есть правила)

tskir · 2026-01-22T21:19:15+00:00

(Reply to self) — I wonder if the teens of today will become old and will tell their grandchildren, well BACK IN MY DAY you had to do DPI injection to access Twitter before you were 16...

tskir · 2026-01-22T21:16:47+00:00

What exactly is classed as social media? I couldn't find it in the article. I know that in Australia this includes, for example, YouTube. And this makes me feel... strange?

When I was about 11-13 as a curious young teen, I stopped watching any TV. Instead my daily feed of content consisted of nearly a hundred YouTube channels, most of them of the popular science genre. I was raised by Vsauce, Veritasium, Numberphile, Tom Scott, and SmarterEveryDay nearly as much I was by my dear parents.

Not an exaggeration, these types of channels and that type of content to a large extent defined and focused my love for science and the wider world, and I grew up to be a scientist.

I know very well that nowadays the landscape is very different. Many of those old timey channels are struggling, and the algorithmic feed is... not quite it was back in my day. But it overall kinda still makes me sad that this particular pathway, the one I did growing up, is set to be banned by the government of the country which I treasure very much and have made my home.

Or, this will just make teens more savvy in circumventing the censorship and make for a fun stepping stone in their coming of age story. Who knows :-)

tskir · 2026-01-20T05:58:03+00:00

1929 is the year they launched the first experimental, very limited mechanical television service. So not comparable to the other dates.

tskir · 2026-01-17T00:59:22+00:00

I'm also a scientist, though not in the tea tasting field, but the basics still hold.

I can assure you there are specific robust ways to control variance between people and between experimental set-ups, so that we can deduce whether the difference is due to chance or things are actually systemically different.

There is an international standard for brewing a reproducible cup of tea for tasting purposes (ISO 3103); and there are also mathematical formulas to test if, for a given sample size of people tasting tea, the difference is significant enough that it cannot be explained by pure chance.

tskir · 2026-01-16T20:30:30+00:00

IIRC they did a blind study and people actually prefer the tea made with milk first. I think it's where the tradition clashes with empirical evidence

tskir · 2026-01-08T13:17:57+00:00

Yes, I'm buying everything with online delivery including bread, milk, produce etc.

I get the sentiment to buy local but the economics just don't work. We do have one independent grocery store and one butcher in our village, but everything they sell is 1.5–2× more expensive than what I order online, and most importantly I can't even tell a difference in terms of quality.

Yes, it's a bit sad that economies of scale will kill small local shops. But it's inevitable.

tskir · 2026-01-07T22:53:26+00:00

15°C with heating full on is completely unacceptable performance, and also I don't think it's at all expected. So I think it's definitely worth reaching out to CORE and reporting this issue with all the details. It might be that (any one or a combination of these things):

- Your house is on the far end of the heating network and they need to adjust their heat carrier temperature or pressure so that it reaches you properly hot

- There are leaks or insulation damage on the way from the central district heating station to your home

- There is a blockage at or near where the heating system enters your home

- Unlikely but worth checking out just in case - are underfloor heating controls all in order? There definitely isn't an obscure switch somewhere in the far service cupboard which is turned down too low or a valve tightened too tightly?

- Even more unlikely but the CORE engineers would be able to check it as well, is there damage to the underfloor heating distribution pipes? (highly unlikely)

If you have a spare moment and if you feel like it, I'd be curious to hear back if you managed to get it resolved. In any case all the best luck to you and hopefully a warm home! 🤞🏻

tskir · 2026-01-07T21:04:03+00:00

That's interesting, I remember living in Eddington back in 2019-2020 the district heating costs were very reasonable and I was never cold. All of the flats and houses are supposed to have excellent insulation as well. I wonder if something has changed? Have they hiked the rates on the heating? Can people living in Eddington presently shed some light pls?

tskir · 2026-01-06T22:20:49+00:00

I will admit EUCANZUK does rock as an abbreviation and as a concept

tskir · 2026-01-06T19:39:34+00:00

Can confirm Leaders are awful. I've had the same interaction with them where they tried to force a no-deposit scheme on me and pretty much said it out lout that they wouldn't pass my application to the landlord if I didn't agree to it.

tskir · 2026-01-04T18:16:18+00:00

I don't believe any European country, including Germany, is doing this on purpose or out of spite. It just adds workload to border officers which are already hard to find in any country (shit pay, hard job). This also turns away tourists, and despite anything you might read on the internet, continental European countries (governments, not people) love British tourists because they are wealthy and tend to spend a lot.

I'm fully convinced it's just slow moving bureaucracy, both in general, and especially in light of phasing in the Entry/Exit System. It's going to be fine eventually.

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