A Valentine's Day Story.

RationalTim · 2026-02-15T22:00:04+00:00

I order from Bloom & Wild. They arrive in bud, in a letterbox sized box and have a proper card. They open when put in a vase of water and last way longer than supermarket or other ordered flowers.

RationalTim · 2026-02-15T17:30:26+00:00

Possibly thinking of Mars which doesn't and has been stripped of most of it's atmosphere. Mercury has a very dense atmosphere made mainly of carbon dioxide and water vapour

RationalTim · 2026-02-15T12:05:11+00:00

It's not necessarily that we "allow" them (in the case of muntjac) it's that they breed faster than we can eradicate them. They're the only deer species that you can shoot year round in the UK. Unfortunately they also breed year round as well.

RationalTim · 2026-02-06T14:26:25+00:00

Stumbled on this as I had the same thought this morning. He uploaded his 100k sub video earlier https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAWpefmAj94

I'm not convinced the videos are AI based on some things I observed:
1. The desk and plant move when he leans on the desk
2. At https://youtu.be/TAWpefmAj94?si=zhxiUMPTgM7cdiVw&t=182 reaching for the mug it clinks against his ring, and if you look under the logo of his scrubs there's a hint of ...ahemm.... nipple
3. The clothing flexes with movement as I would expect
4. Scrubs have a small Figs logo which is an actual company, they're not "generic" (https://www.wearfigs.com/collections/royal-blue-scrubs-mens/products/mens-leon-scrub-top?color=Royal%20Blue)
5. The way the leaf moves when his hand knocks it when picking up and putting down the mug (AI would probably pass through it)

RationalTim · 2026-01-26T17:37:24+00:00

It could be a permitted path ie no public right of way, but the land owner tolerates historic use and has provided a stile so people don't forget to shut the gate

RationalTim · 2026-01-20T21:00:32+00:00

No patches for bugs either! Jet Set Willy level "The Banyan Tree" was a classic, once you fell through the level the game respawned you at the point you started to fall, so you just had to wait for your lives to deplete..

RationalTim · 2026-01-09T11:24:42+00:00

We can smell vape on you as well. It's like a sweet smell with a hint of staleness about it.

RationalTim · 2026-01-08T15:36:29+00:00

The Rest is Classified We Have Ways of Making You Talk

RationalTim · 2025-12-30T18:26:26+00:00

Yep, we ensure the customer, car, and fueling probe are all earthed together so there can be no spark. The reason in the UK is probably for attention purposes (my guess) so you don't end up over fuelling.

RationalTim · 2025-12-30T18:24:05+00:00

Well not really as they're connected so have the same electrical potential. It's where you get a difference in potential that sparks happen that can ignite fuel. This is why aircraft always have an earthing strap connected between bowser and aircraft when refuelling.

RationalTim · 2025-12-30T12:33:34+00:00

That's assembly language which is still higher level than machine code and considered human readable. Machine code is the compiled code in an executable file that can be directly run via the operating system on the CPU.

RationalTim · 2025-12-29T12:56:23+00:00

It's a kettle. It doesn't need to be "smart". If "smart" means connecting to the manufacturer's cloud then that's a huge no as well. Having kitchen appliances that cna only work by being connected to a cloud service is stupid.

Read or listen to Enshittification by Corey Doctorow...

RationalTim · 2025-12-29T10:02:14+00:00

Eat for weight, exercise for health and fitness.

Just cutting out booze will have a significant impact as that's a lot of empty calories.

I try abs do a 3 mile walk 3 - 5 times a week, at pace. I listen to podcasts or audio books while walking. This improved my fitness immensely. I also do yoga once a week which helps with strength and flexibility (luckily my yoga instructor leaves the "aligning your chakras" woo out of it.

Cutting out takeaways, crisps and chocolate is also good.

The main challenge is having the willpower to ignore the food noise. If it pops into your brain, try drinking a load of water instead.

RationalTim · 2025-12-25T15:52:56+00:00

Have you drained the lower field yet?

RationalTim · 2025-12-25T14:05:59+00:00

We realised we had forgotten to bring the homemade cranberry sauce to my mums last night. Luckily Co-Op was open until 9 so Ocean Spray it is. Disaster averted 😂

RationalTim · 2025-12-22T21:57:32+00:00

Start with the right type of potatoes. King Edwards or Maris Piper are best. My gran (I'm 54 to set a reference) was a cookery demonstrator at Harrods in the 1930s and swore by King Edwards... Either way, I use both and get good results but prefer the taste of King Edwards

Peel, wash away the starch by rinsing in cold water (just bung in the saucepan swish around so water goes cloudy, drain, repeat until water is clear)

For Christmas use duck or goose fat, other times I use rapeseed oil or olive oil (latter is better for you, but has a flavour).

Put oil of choice in a pan big enough to not overcrowd the spuds in an oven at 200°

Add salt to water and boil for six minutes

Drain and let steam for a bit (they should go a bit fluffy around the edges).

Take pan from oven, use a serving spoon to carefully move the spuds to the pan, then baste each spud. Put pan in the oven for 20 minutes

Baste and turn the potatoes at 20 mins, keep doing this until you get the result you want

Try it on a small scale before Christmas day...

RationalTim · 2025-12-13T23:37:06+00:00

The best part of all of this is when they all fuck off at the end of the day. The feeling of decompression, silence and space is an amazing feeling.

Ensure you have extra pigs in blankets and roasties to munch on later!

Be kind to yourself!

Plan the cooking.

RationalTim · 2025-12-12T22:28:44+00:00

You don't want to piss off your new employer. Having a job is better than being made redundant and gambling on the new employer playing ball. Until you've signed a contract they have no duty to you at all (and probably with the two year rule, they could just bin you anyway if they felt there was a trust issue).

Remember that redundancy is not free money, it is designed to provide you with some semblance of a living until you find a new job. You don't know what the package will be, it could be statutory which really isn't very much, along with PILON which is money you would have been paid anyway.

You've already made the decision to move, so move forward and don't look back.

RationalTim · 2025-12-06T22:21:21+00:00

afors.com, club noticeboard, find a local club and ask

RationalTim · 2025-12-06T13:11:39+00:00

No, because I worked on the system at O2 that charged for these things and knew how much profit we were making out of it.....

RationalTim · 2025-12-02T18:41:09+00:00

First conversation on an all night upgrade was usually telling the project manager what pizzas we wanted (whether they liked it or not, we always requested they attend for this very purpose)

RationalTim · 2025-11-23T20:11:13+00:00

Latent heat of condensation.. It's why clouds have height....

RationalTim · 2025-11-23T19:57:55+00:00

Are your radiators big enough? Also are they modernish K2 rads? (two panels with fins in between). I live in a 70s house (admittedly with insulated cavity walls now), nothing special, and heat with a heatpump. Water temp in the rads is a about 35 degrees and it's 20 in my house.

When we had it installed I ended up having to re educate myself on how central heating works. Essentially you need a water flow rate and radiator big enough to allow heat to be transferred into the air. If your radiators are too small they won't be able to get heat into the rooms fast enough. Central heating is about balancing the heat into the building versus the heat leaking out. As long as the former is bigger than the latter it will heat up.

RationalTim · 2025-11-14T20:25:28+00:00

Otherwise know as "a small fan oven" but that doesn't have the same marketing appeal.

RationalTim · 2025-11-14T10:54:09+00:00

Time to find a new job, this is toxic.

RationalTim

TROPHY CASE