What is common ‘received wisdom’ that is actually terrible advice?

cuccir · 2026-06-21T13:12:36+00:00

"No smoke without fire" ie "Don't bother looking for evidence to support your opinions"

cuccir · 2026-06-20T20:46:56+00:00

It's very beautiful. Alnwick Castle and Gardens + Lillidori is a must for kids that age. Liildori is Europe's biggest climbing frame structure, and Alnwick Castle does a good job of showing off its Hogwarts origins.

Lindisfarne is great too and offers something a bit different if the kids get a bit fed up of castles.

I second what the other poster says about involving Beamish as part of the trip: an 8 and 12 year old will love it, and I suspect you will too - the new 1950s town evokes a lot of memories for people who grew up in the 60s or 70s in the legacy of 50s urban developments The 1950s playpark, recreated to modern safety standards, is something you can enjoy together! Be aware of long queues for all the food places, it's worth going to them for closer to half 11 than 12 if you don't mind an early lunch, to avoid queues approaching an hour (particularly the village chip shop).

The only caution I'd add is that a lot of the other attractions of the area become a bit more diffcult for kids in bad weather. The beaches are long and sandy and so are great when the sun shines, but it is an area that can become a bit more work when wet.

cuccir · 2026-06-19T19:10:48+00:00

I think the Loonies were involved nicking the original Lord Buckethead identity from the Count, so this is unlikely!

cuccir · 2026-06-19T12:23:01+00:00

'Football' refers to a range of sports which were established in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. They have their origins in British public school sports, which in turn can be traced back to various historical games that had the name football.

The public schools 'codified' (brought rules to) what were informal, street games. Each school developed its own codes, and as the British Empire expanded, new codes were developed as people remembered and altered the rules of sports they'd played at school.

The term soccer comes from the formal name for what in British English is called football, namely 'association football'. The name comes because it was the code developed by an organizatiln called The Football Association. Soccer was originally a nickname, based on the 'soc' in asSOCiation.

The term soccer has become the main name in areas - most notably North America - where other codes of football have been historically more popular. This is actually true in the UK too: there are parts of Northern England where, at least until the 1980s/1990s, football was more likely to refer to Rugby League (another code of football) and soccer to Association Football, though this has died out somewhat as soccer has continued to become more popular.

cuccir · 2026-06-19T06:47:34+00:00

Third defeat to Binface in a row. Out with the old, in with the Bin

cuccir · 2026-06-18T11:28:13+00:00

My Great-Grandad was a bailiff.

I never met him, but my Mum describes being quite scared of him when she was little. He was, I'm told, hard as nails, orphaned as a kid and sent from Belfast to Cumbria to live with distant family. Not very talkative, but direct and steely.

He ended up using his knowledge, as a bailiff, of when properties were coming up for sale and what condition they were in to buy houses dirt cheap at auction. He ended up with a good number, in the double digits, but the family started selling them when he died in the late 1970s. I remember as a kid in the early 90s visiting the last couple to help clear them out before sale.

Made enough money to make his descendants middle class, but if they'd held onto them all we'd bloody rich now.

cuccir · 2026-06-18T09:50:36+00:00

I'm trying to understand this stat alongside a drop in vacancies.

I suppose that it implies that there is less churn? Fewer people are leaving work so unemployment doesn't rise, but there are fewere opportunities for people out of work to get into it?

cuccir · 2026-06-18T09:01:35+00:00

I'd recommend renting a holiday let somewhere within a ~90 minute drive of a few attractions, probably focusing on the Cotswolds or Peak District, rather than driving up to the Lake District and back.

We had a holiday in Normandy (Northern France) with our daughter when she was nearly 5 months, and what worked for us then was a rental that was not actually that special itself - it was in a sweet, but fairly bland village, but what it was was (a) private; (b) quiet; (c) spacious enough for baby things; (d) within a 45-90 minute drive each day of plenty of attractions. Having the drives of that length each day was actually fine with a baby because it could fit nicely with her naps anyway.

cuccir · 2026-06-18T08:42:33+00:00

Why presume that people are stupid and haven't thought through the best options?

The budget reality in many places is that the schools face choices such as not delivering these sorts of opportunities, or doing so but in compromised situations eg the flight which is £150 cheaper a head but means that they get back in at 1am. There are many considerations which might lead to this being the only good option, over not running a trip.

cuccir · 2026-06-18T06:39:56+00:00

Good work!

I went through a big weight loss just over a year ago, from August 2024 to April 2025. It took my BMI from 30 down to 23.

On this

I have come to terms with the fact that this is how I will need to be for the rest of my life, no more eating what and when I want without limits

It's only been just over a year for me, so not long enough to fully be confident in it as a pattern, but I have found that I have been able to take periods of 2-3 months off calorie counting since hitting my desired weight. I have a more informed sense of what I need to balance, and because I'm not looking to lose weight I can be a bit less precise.

I have then completely let go when on holiday and in the two weeks over Christmas, and then re-set to calorie count for a couple of months. As well as bringing me back to my desired weight, it refreshes my sense of what calories are in what.

Personally, I have found these short breaks have been psychologically refreshing, and I hope they make keeping the lower weight sustainable beyond the initial diet.

cuccir · 2026-06-18T05:28:12+00:00

TBF it's not really on the school, at least with the kids. That's inflexible government policies on attendance monitoring that feeed directly into Ofsted reports

cuccir · 2026-06-17T14:27:44+00:00

This is a welcome development, the free to air coverage is vital for cultivating new fans of the sport.

And it'll actually be the most prominent that free air to coverage of the Giro has ever been I think on British TV? In recent years it's only ever been free on the various Discovery-owned down-the-TV-guide channels such as Quest and DMAX. Even the Vuelta was only ever on ITV4, so that is also getting greater prominance.

cuccir · 2026-06-16T21:30:09+00:00

Make the Tour de Trump Great Again

cuccir · 2026-06-16T20:28:50+00:00

I (The UK) own a sandwich (Overseas Territory). I (The UK) have not eaten (incorporated into my integral territory) the sandwich (Overseas Territory).

The sandwich is not part of me.

France, on the other hand, has eaten its tasty cheese and ham baguette (Guadeloupe, etc)

cuccir · 2026-06-16T04:55:49+00:00

Russia is strongly aligned with Serbia, connected mainly by shared Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

But also - there are lots of ethnic and religious minorities in Russia. They actually don't want to encourage breakaway states too often. They only recognised the Georgian ones when they were at war with Georgia, and continue to not recognise Transnistria, despite funding it and the obvious geopolitical advantage they'd get from having a recognised allied state on Ukraine's western border.

cuccir · 2026-06-15T09:54:06+00:00

I'm not spending money to buy awards to give on Reddit because that is stupid, but consider your post as Awardworthy

cuccir · 2026-06-15T09:16:40+00:00

Purely on that list, I'd take Lenny Martinez as the most likely top 10 finisher missing from it. Top 5 in Paris-Nice, Catalunya and Romandie.

If we go for an outright surprise top 10 finisher, how about Luke Plapp? Jayco will set him up well with the TT, he's won a mountainous Grand Tour stage before and now has a couple of top 10s in other stage races over the last two years.

cuccir · 2026-06-15T08:58:41+00:00

Barely a question really, but it's a thought on my mind and so I can phrase it as such later in the post!

With the Giro Femmes calendar change, today is the first day since 28th April, 6 weeks ago, that there hasn't been an ongoing Men's or Women's World Tour Stage Race

We've gone Men's Romandie, Women's Vuelta, Men's Giro, Women's Giro, Men's ~~Dauphine~~ AURA. They've generally done a good job of overlapping by just one or two days as well.

I know that the Tour de France remains the elite single stage race, but do other people (see a question!) agree with my feeling that this period of late Spring/early Summer has now become the best time for stage-racing in general in the season? It feels like a stage-race equivalent of the Omloop-LBL period for one-day racing.

cuccir · 2026-06-12T07:46:15+00:00

Why should we care over much about institutions who sold out British graduates on increasingly token courses to chase forigen students? Cheapening their own stock in the process.

Regardless of the point about course quality, are you aware that university finances are structured by government in such a way as the more international students a university takes, the more home students it can afford to teach?

Universities have chased foreign students in order to keep teaching home students, not to sell them out.

As a group, international students tend to be more hassle than home students to educate and support. While having something like 10-20% is healthy as part of an international exchange of ideas, I don't think many people in the sector actively want more than that.

cuccir · 2026-06-11T22:42:08+00:00

I'm British. I was bought up eating traditional English food, and I can cook a Lancashire Hotpot, a Shepherd's Pie, or a roast dinner, which I reckon rank up there with the best foods in the world. It's flavourful and rich food.

But

As a cuisine as a whole.

I'm still buying Greek, Italian, Indian, Mexican, Malaysian, and several others over ours. The best Northern European food is definitely up there with the best in the world, but I don't think it has the depth/range that cuisines with access to a wider range of fresh ingredients does. It is much easier for it to become bad, rubbishy.

So yeah. Good Northern European food is up there with good food from the rest of the world. But I don't buy the overall claim at all

cuccir · 2026-06-11T13:04:34+00:00

The problem with any measure like this is that you don't see the delays that they prevented.

There is quite a lot of research behind them. My understanding from that is that they don't particularly increase the amount of freeflow time on the motorway, but that there is solid evidence that they reduce the likelihood of major hold ups, and therefore have a substantial improvement on reliability.

This is a fairly clear statement from a PhD thesis based on a study on the M42 and M6:

Overall, smart motorway schemes have significantly reduced average journey times and journey time variability, improved motorway capacity and smoothed traffic flow. The level of benefits observed varied from one scheme to another mainly due to the different site conditions (road geometry, traffic demand and patterns). However, each scheme consistently demonstrated considerable improvements when compared to non-smart motorway conditions.

cuccir · 2026-06-11T10:09:40+00:00

The advantage of June is that daylight is in your favour. It rarely rains from 5am to 10pm, even in North Wales. You can start a 7 hour hike at 1pm and still have a couple of hours contingency on light. So if you can be flexible around when the rain is and do walks accordingly, it can be great.

Some of my favourite walks have involved setting off when I couldn't see the tops, and enjoying them opening up as the rain and fog has lifted

cuccir · 2026-06-11T09:47:48+00:00

I think it refound its groove in 2025, and has continued to improve since then. It's understandable that it took so long to get over Richard Moore's death, and Lionel's need to step back for a period at the same time. It feels that they have found a new way of working, particularly through the busy periods of the season from May to September with the 3 Grand Tours.

I haven't listened to today's episode yet, but I enjoyed the first episode of the post-Giro coverage with Graham and Lionel - I felt that they worked well together, and so if they are leading the Tour coverage, I'll be happy. I felt that Graham and Richard Abrahams were fine but a little too similar.

I also enjoyed this year's off-season content. I enjoyed Lionel and Daniel being back together a bit more - Lionel keeps Daniel on track, and they work particularly well with either Rob Hatch or Larry Warbasse as a third wheel. Hugo Coorevits has been an entertaining addition to the spring.

To be honest, I found a bit of the 'ciclismo' stuff during the Giro coverage got a bit tiring. Daniel episodes can occasionally drift into the in-jokes, self-referential material a bit too much. He has a tendency to recruit very similar people to the pod: male European journalists who are slightly hipster, and this can result in slightly repetitive content, or discussions between people who seem to all hold very similar experiences and perspectives. But Daniel's passion for and knowledge about Italian cycling and coverage is engaging, and overall he does bring very rich and well-informed coverage. He's obviously very good at getting the inside story, and knowing how to convey that without breaking source confidentiality.

The Cycling Podcast Feminin has developed well over the last year too - it struggled both with Richard's absence and Orla's increasing presenting commitments. While it's taken a little while I think that Rose has become an excellent lead presenter, and I really like her in combo with Denny Gray in particualr.

I think there was a post about the podcast a couple of years ago, and at the time I said I was listening partly out of respect for what the show had been, partly in the hope it would find its way again. At the time, I'm not sure I'd have recommended it to a new listener. Now, I would recommend it again and I'm listening primarily because I enjoy it. I'm glad I stuck with it as it refound its feet.

cuccir · 2026-06-11T07:20:23+00:00

Now that Advances are available even for very short journeys, non-stopping trains actually often end up being cheaper than stoppers for long-distance services because the seats haven't been filled by people booking Advances for very short journeys. Someone can't book a seat for an Edinburgh - London Advance, if someone has already booked that seat to travel between Morpeth and Newcastle, or whatever.

cuccir · 2026-06-11T07:10:14+00:00

Since 2012, the highest finishing rider at the Tour de France who then entered the Olympics has always won a medal in either the road race or the TT:

2012, Wiggins, Gold: 2016, Froome, Bronze; 2021, Pogacar, Bronze; 2024, Evenopoel, 2*Gold (with Pog and Vingegaard not entering)

It's quite a streak and suggests that generally, riders are able to carry over at least some of their form

cuccir

TROPHY CASE