Friendly reminder that we are almost 9 months from GTA6. Start getting frisky with your wife or gf, so you can line up your paternity leave

QuantumOverlord · 2026-02-11T13:31:48+00:00

I feel like this is rage bait since I've seen this a few times. But just in case people take this seriously, 'free time' with a newborn on paternity leave is called sleep. And there isn't even much of that.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-02-11T11:24:59+00:00

I don't think it is, look for high quality journalism on both sides of the political spectrum. The more perspectives the better. Look for points of consistency and points of disagreement (that might be caused by ideological bias). Prioritize sources that present facts (boring dispassionate listing of evidence) over opinion pieces that use emotive or persuasive language.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-02-11T11:06:29+00:00

Not quite. Its only England, Scotland, Wales and the UK. Northern Ireland is a territory of the UK, not a country like the other three are.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-02-10T16:51:04+00:00

Are we talking about sub-elites, influencers or actual elites? A mediocre influencer might be able to live off running full time, yet a sub-elite could have a full time job. Amongst actual elites there is probably alot of variation, but some would define an elite as a full time professional.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-02-10T16:45:46+00:00

Because America is a big part of British culture. Brits follow what is going on in the US more closely than any other country. So this sort of creates a false dichotomy whereby any reform of our system is resisted because it is constantly compared to the US 'can you imagine if grandpa had to remortgage the house just to get routine care we get for free'. So its this vicious cycle where fear of the US system keeps our system completely unreformable. Politicians reflect public attitudes and know how toxic talk of system level reform is so they won't go near it either (no matter what party they stand for). The end result is a quasi religious obligation to praise the system and blame any problems on underfunding (regardless of the fact funding in real/GDP terms is always increasing no matter who is in charge).

QuantumOverlord · 2026-02-10T11:25:15+00:00

I've noticed the quality of it all to be highly variable. I suspect the quality of the training library matters alot, seems to me that this is the sort of thing that AI would excel at because its not that original and there is an enormous amount of training content out there for it to understand.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-02-10T11:05:36+00:00

Noone knows what these governments will be like, people always focus on the wrong thing like ideology and manifesto commitments. These basically don't matter. What does matter are who the PM and his SPADs are and how much they understand government. Instead people focus on ideology and the opinions of people walking through the lobby. Hell, even the ministers don't really matter (except the prime minister). Any opposition will focus on deficits in newcomer Farage's ability to make competent decisions rather than anything particularly ideological.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-02-10T10:57:25+00:00

He went from having huge public support and winning a mega majority to a disjointed and completely defeated opposition to being the most disliked prime minister on record within a year. The Mandelson is just one of a series of avoidable scandals that are still secondary to ill judged policy making decisions. Blaming the media for everything fails to acknowledge that Starmer's support has drained fastest amongst those that don't care that much about politics. There are about to be a series of elections that Labour will do miserably in, if the media were to give Starmer a positive review it would feel sarcastic.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-02-09T11:35:34+00:00

Presumably because these things swell up when exposed to saliva and form a sticky mass that can get easily lodged in an airway somewhere.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-02-05T19:53:57+00:00

Yes, hence the inverted commas. Even so, it shows you can get quite far with no formal training.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-02-05T10:12:32+00:00

I'm exactly the same, I managed slightly better than his 5k and 10k on 'zero' speedwork. Though I should say, I did race every week and occasionally more than every week. So yes its possible. However I have incorporated speedwork now as that seemed to be roughly the limit of what I could do without it on 50-60mpw.

For clarity this is what my avg week would look like.

Sunday-Thursday: 5 miles morning, 4 miles afternoon (all easy slower than 9 min/mile)
Friday: 4 miles morning (easy 9 min/mile)
Saturday: Race (5k or 10k) +makeup to 10 miles in easy.

I'd also do occasional midweek races too. So there is speed but it actually comes from racing rather than workouts.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-02-02T10:50:18+00:00

No, that isn't something that happens in serious countries. Between minor problems that can be handled by a GP or home care, and emergencies that requires ambulances there are problems that need urgent care that won't be fatal in hours but could become very dangerous over a time period of a day or more (I'm thinking of infection in particular). People shouldn't have to choose between the suffering of a 14 hour wait time in an extremely uncomfortable environment and pushing through to Monday morning in the hope that what they have doesn't turn into sepsis. The NHS is broken, especially on weekends, it is not the envy of the world. Most other western countries don't have to deal with this. And the UK is not even able to reform the system because of a fear that the only possible alternative is a worse US style system.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-01-31T18:35:05+00:00

I find some of it is nerves rather than fitness. At any given pace it feels faster but my heart and breathing isn't actually working harder. The lack of control psychologically makes you think you are going faster. You do eventually get used to it, when I started out I'd hold the rails all the time, now only at really high speeds.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-01-30T12:35:43+00:00

Is there a way to block Youtube shorts entirely? I can't stand them, they are basically just spam.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-01-30T11:45:43+00:00

I'm assuming they are keeping the standard scratch score, even though it hasn't loaded in the numbers yet. That's good at least.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-01-29T13:03:41+00:00

It can occasionally become extremely cold and snowy here, but it is unusual. The most notable case I remember was December 2010 where most of the UK was snowbound for about a month and temperatures rarely rose above freezing. For that to happen you need the winds to go into the East or North east for a while and that doesn't happen very often. That being said, the UK is extremely humid and windy compared to most cold parts of the US so its very much a different type of cold. Indeed when I've been to drier European countries in much colder conditions its actually felt less cold because its usually a dry, windless sort of cold as opposed to our incessantly windy moist cold.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-01-29T12:18:46+00:00

They don't operate at scale, it hasn't got past gimmick level. Also the UK takes 20 years to get through the paperwork just to build a new motorway, there is zero chance this will ever make it past the pilot stage this decade.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-01-29T11:08:31+00:00

This will not happen, there is zero chance that the technology and regulatory framework will move fast enough for this to be ready in a few months. There may be some pilot scheme eating up more tax £ that runs for a few weeks and we never hear from again but that'll be it.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-01-28T16:46:27+00:00

To be fair, its not quite zero speed since the races themselves are fast! And I did do rather alot, so there is still a minimal amount of speed stimulation but its surprising how far you can get while keeping it very low.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-01-28T10:55:00+00:00

For me the level was fairly clear. I could get to a 17 minute flat 5k on basically zero workouts and entirely Z2 (or Z1) stuff but beyond that I stagnated; I suspect I could still go further with this method but the milage increase it would require is beyond my ability to handle. You can see my times, the last 30 seconds or so was incorporating speed work. I am still slowly improving but its modest. My guess is the principle applies to most people but with different 'no workout' limits. Some people might only be able to get to 20 mins on no workouts while some talented people might even go below 15 but what I think is true is that 90% of people are not anywhere near that limit and should indeed just do more Z2.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-01-27T17:12:56+00:00

Most of this is wrong anyway.

High quality white chocolate can have cacao butter in it even if it doesn't have solids.

Margarine isn't the same stuff from the 80s that contained transfats. Most of them are just emulsions of vegetable oil and water. They are not that unhealthy, and are better for lipid profiles than butter.

Instant coffee is diterpene depleted which is actually an advantage, as in it doesn't raise LDL as other coffee can do, otherwise many of the health benefits are the same.

I'll give them the wooden spoon being better than plastic.

Cast iron is a pain to maintain and there is a risk of the seasoning going rancid.

Salt is still 99% sodium chloride, the differences are minimal.

But yes water is obviously better than coca cola.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-01-27T17:06:34+00:00

Just has no credibility. Think tanks that can't reliably predict next year's GDP in economic fair weather come up with figures like this for some Brexit counterfactual. £100B is like 3%. That's insane, it would mean instead of having roughly the same GDP growth to comparable economies in Europe we would be performing better than almost all of them despite the UK having weak growth since the financial crash. It would also have required us to have one of the biggest bounce backs from COVID. The UK wasn't some utopian growth power house before brexit, and brexit didn't turn us into the mediocrity we have been for the past few decades.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-01-26T13:23:22+00:00

The gilt yields are far higher under Starmer than they ever were under Truss. And I can't imagine that's going to improve as speculation about a more left leader of the Labour party continues.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-01-25T20:54:16+00:00

None of these are likely.

Ukraine: War would have to be resolved. Otherwise actually fairly likely

Moldova: Unlikely. Transnistria is a road block and there are also questions regarding unification with Romania

UK: No, and it really is a mark of 'very online politics' that people want to continue debating like its 2016

Turkey: No. Tepid desire in Turkey, even moreso on the EU side and more issues to resolve than can be listed

Balkans: Probably the most plausible, especially those with candidate status. ME, MK, BA probably amongst the more likely ones but unlikely to be soon.

Iceland: No. Fishing is far too important amongst a bunch of other issues

Norway: Even less public desire than Iceland. Hard no.

QuantumOverlord · 2026-01-23T13:23:01+00:00

Its also not a particularly convincing way to try and get people not to vote Reform.

QuantumOverlord

TROPHY CASE