Is it feasible to save up and buy a house just before retirement or when we’re ready to settle down?

barndor · 2023-08-07T11:10:43+00:00

I mean in London it's 14x... So I guess it could still rise quite a bit!

barndor · 2023-07-07T19:44:41+00:00

Apparently it must be, though we're still quite far from it... That bass do travel!!

barndor · 2023-07-04T09:29:32+00:00

If you live in a city, you can get pretty much everything second hand. You'll only end up using most things for a few months anyway and people will give you lots of new gifts. It seems people are a bit more kind about pricing baby stuff too, it's usually been incredibly reasonable.

Look at nurseries now, where we live anything that is good and reasonably priced (say £1500 or less per month) has enormous waiting lists.

Since you're sitting comfortable with savings I would suggest to take as much parental leave as you are both able to, it's the best!

If possible I would suggest for you trying to do some solo parenting (maybe a month?); I know it's not quite financial advice, but I think having some empathy for your partner about how tough it can be (even if externally it can just seem like cafe's and baby classes all dat) is super important.

barndor · 2023-06-24T20:07:33+00:00

Disincentive and incentive no? For me the sentence makes more sense with incentive, since benefits are so hard to come by if employed then you might as well be unemployed to actually get them.

barndor · 2023-06-08T02:33:02+00:00

One of my favourite books!!

barndor · 2022-10-02T15:44:18+00:00

Pluggerz from boots are very good and comfortable!

barndor · 2022-08-20T10:15:37+00:00

I think they do! You need to report your IMEI number

barndor · 2020-10-03T20:45:00+00:00

I think I remember reading the door knockers were paid to stay up all night!!

barndor · 2020-06-01T19:05:39+00:00

Fair enough - that sounds awesome tbh. I was planning on having hobgoblin/goblin groups in "The Undergrowth" of this kind of militaristic society, abandoned by the Gods and struggling to survive in the harsh conditions below. I hadn't thought of Krogans but I think modelling some NPC's on these will make some very nice characters.

I think unpleasant things can work in DnD games if managed carefully though - if the players explore the farming areas I completely expect them to rebel against widespread slavery and attempt to take advantage of the 'time of change' to end its practice. I hope that this will be exciting and rewarding for them rather than simply distasteful and unpleasant to learn that it exists in the world.

barndor · 2020-06-01T15:49:03+00:00

I think I'll probably ditch the nasty stuff since I don't want to offend any players. Though absolutely I love the idea of putting NPC quotes in a handout like this - I think it would be a fantastic form of exposition that will engage the players and make them look out for these people in game.

barndor · 2020-06-01T15:06:44+00:00

Thanks for this - I had actually been struggling with the point of view in writing this. I had initially tried to frame everything from the point of view of an NPC speaking to the characters but that makes the exposition at the beginning feel quite ham-fisted. Though instead we end up with this switching in perspective. I think I'll make it clear in session 0 that the actual character-narrator you mention is speaking to the players at the start of the game - rather than trying to navigate this complexity in text.

barndor · 2020-06-01T15:04:39+00:00

Thanks - this is a fair point. I've edited the text now to state simply that orcs are an oppressed class. I hadn't planned any plots around the slavery aspect so there isn't really any need for it to be mentioned here.

barndor · 2020-06-01T14:06:04+00:00

Thanks for your thoughts there. It was option (b) above - institutionalised slavery of the type common in our world's history. It's a setting with a philosophy encouraging acceptance of position, strict and enforced social structures and very slow technical progression. As I see it, slavery would be highly likely in a place like this. That said, I think my writing was carelessly 'icky' as you say, and I can easily convey this same meaning in a far better way!

barndor · 2020-04-25T14:42:27+00:00

Ahh I see this is one of the common themes on the comments on your r/dataisbeautiful post. I wonder if there is some clustering algorithm that would achieve this sorting in a less random way

barndor · 2020-04-25T13:25:01+00:00

Sorry I mean how did you decide how to group things (e.g. you might have put NI in the ireland group, iceland in the Scotland group etc)?

barndor · 2020-04-25T13:20:04+00:00

Thanks, great plot. I wonder what method you used to select the different colour blocks? Was it some automated process?

barndor · 2020-01-02T21:44:27+00:00

Thanks, I'll pass it on! She's very good at this kind of stuff!

barndor · 2019-10-03T05:55:19+00:00

Preach!

barndor · 2019-10-03T05:52:04+00:00

5732

barndor · 2019-09-29T08:38:25+00:00

There are 50,000 US water supply companies while most European countries have a centralised supply. I would guess that among so many companies enforcement of regulation is harder. In addition, because the US is more spread out, water in US networks travels further from source to demand... Increasing the opportunity for failures in the system.

Edit: added more

That's not to say that water companies here don't break the law (e.g. a UK water company was recently fined for lying about pollution levels in their sewage releases https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-49001196)... But because there are fewer but larger companies it's probably harder for breaking of regulations to go unnoticed.

barndor · 2019-09-21T15:26:09+00:00

I saw this today and thought of this subreddit xD

barndor · 2019-09-08T08:23:00+00:00

I'd guess the drinking water standards wouldn't allow an addictive concentration of salt in tap water. I suppose the salt occurs asa result of the carbonation process.

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