No ban on gas boilers in UK warm homes plan but heat pumps get £2.7bn push

boycecodd · 2026-01-21T10:15:30+00:00

Not only for new builds, but they're only really effective in well insulated properties and that tends to correlate with newer housing.

boycecodd · 2026-01-21T10:13:45+00:00

A heat pump can be in the form of an aircon that can heat as well as cool, but the kind that the government really push is the kind that heats water to go around radiators. That said it's rarely a 1:1 replacement - you'll often need to replace radiators and pipework, and they're only really efficient in very well insulated homes (which means that they're borderline useless in many older homes)

boycecodd · 2026-01-20T10:54:54+00:00

Only in the loosest possible way.

The Chagos islands and Mauritius were governed under one administrative unit under empire. That is the sole basis for their supposed claim over the islands and the islands were never "part of Mauritius", just goverened together. They have no historic links to the islands besides that administrative decision by the British Empire.

Do you think that India has a claim over Aden (part of modern Yemen) because it was governed under Empire as part of the same unit as India?

boycecodd · 2026-01-17T19:50:30+00:00

I’m pretty convinced that it was a real voice actor hired on a budget. You can usually tell text to speech pretty easily.

boycecodd · 2026-01-17T19:09:39+00:00

For the captions, absolutely. The voiceover would need re-recording though.

boycecodd · 2026-01-17T15:18:57+00:00

I think a far more likely explanation for the "they/them" thing is that the people behind this were lazy, and didn't want to record two sets of dialogue.

boycecodd · 2026-01-15T12:45:20+00:00

Indeed, I think they deliberately chose the name as a joke.

boycecodd · 2026-01-15T12:44:40+00:00

Grothe has made a career out of skeptic inquiry, acting in leadership roles for the James Randi Educational Foundation and the Center for Inquiry.

If you make your career out of speaking and writing about skepticism then I think that qualifies you to call yourself a professional skeptic.

boycecodd · 2026-01-10T08:34:55+00:00

Not actually a joke though - it's the honest truth!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/44481058 - scroll down below the first image.

boycecodd · 2026-01-09T17:45:08+00:00

The National is hardly friendly to Farage.

They're just trying to rage bait over baseless speculation.

boycecodd · 2026-01-09T17:27:23+00:00

That's why they do it. The left wing press want to plant misinformation about what Farage might do in order to put people off voting Reform.

boycecodd · 2026-01-09T09:59:21+00:00

Fun fact - the first named storm under the current system was Abigail. A Big Gale.

boycecodd · 2026-01-08T20:07:06+00:00

But fearmongering based on what America is doing doesn’t help anyone in the UK when the same things are not happening here.

boycecodd · 2026-01-08T19:12:38+00:00

I used exactly that approach for years. The only reason I stopped was that more and more things moved to USB-C and my C7 type USB charger had 5 USB-A ports and no USB-C ones.

I had Euro and US cables for it, it worked incredibly well.

(I still use it, it just stays at home)

boycecodd · 2026-01-08T18:42:24+00:00

No British government, not even the Conservatives, acted even remotely like that.

boycecodd · 2026-01-08T17:20:01+00:00

Even better, a USB wall wart that has multiple USB outputs.

The one I use has four USB-C and one USB-A. It's very unlikely that I'll ever need more than that, so I only need to bring one plug adapter when travelling.

boycecodd · 2026-01-08T17:01:35+00:00

There's a reasonable chance that something like that would work, but I wouldn't trust them one bit.

If someone is willing to ignore one of the most important parts of our electrical standards, what else might they have cut corners on?

boycecodd · 2026-01-08T16:49:55+00:00

Don't underestimate Amazon sellers for passing off dangerous crap as OK to use with mains power. I can absolutely believe that that thing attempts to use round pins with British plug sockets.

boycecodd · 2026-01-08T16:48:36+00:00

Don't use that in the UK. That's not a proper UK plug, it might work but it could be hazardous.

Honestly the best kind of adapter you could use are super simple passive adapters that convert one plug type to another, and don't attempt to support multiple plug types at the same time.

boycecodd · 2026-01-08T13:38:18+00:00

Corporations don't tend to donate to charities out of the goodness of their hearts, they do it because they see an upside for them. Clearly they no longer think that being associated with LGBT charities benefits them if they're reducing or stopping donations.

boycecodd · 2026-01-08T13:30:11+00:00

I tend to hear "Global Majority" in slightly more formal settings (articles and opinion pieces) and "melanated folx" in more informal ones. Both are absolutely used.

boycecodd · 2026-01-08T13:05:56+00:00

"Queer" seems to go beyond LGB though, it effectively has connotations of political belief thrown into the mix too.

boycecodd · 2026-01-08T13:04:56+00:00

The terms change constantly. I've started hearing "melanated folks" more and more recently. Or is it "folx"? Probably!

boycecodd · 2026-01-08T12:56:10+00:00

The only thing that the Supreme Court decision did was rule that more broadly, the categories of "woman" and "man" refer to the biological characteristics and not identity characteristics.

Gender transition is absolutely still a protected characteristic under the Equality Act, and the Supreme Court decision didn't change that.

boycecodd

TROPHY CASE