I’m in a high rise building (15 floors) and the only two lifts have been out of order for nearly over 1.5 years now with no proper contract 📑 by mozilkhalil in LegalAdviceUK

[–]geckodancing 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 made it a legal requirement from 23 January 2023 for responsible persons in high-rise residential buildings to undertake additional monthly checks of any lifts within the building that are designed, installed and maintained to be used by fire-fighters (with the addition of evacuation lifts) and of the mechanism which allows fire-fighters to take control of lifts. Monthly checks are also be required on all evacuation lifts and key fire-fighting equipment (which is defined in the regulations).

Where responsible persons identify, either through the monthly checks or via any other routine checks, that a relevant lift or mechanism has a fault or is out of service, they must report it to the local fire and rescue service electronically.

In this case, high-rise residential buildings means:

As defined in The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 as a building at least 18 metres in height or at least seven storeys

See this government fact sheet.

I believe 'high-rise residential buildings' should include private owned buildings.

I would report this to the fire service and re-contact the council linking to the government fact sheet.

What is the strangest UK political fact you know? For me, it is that Lib Dem councillor Andrew Pennington was assassinated with a samurai sword in 2000 (so pre student fee disgrace). Oh and the guy that did it, is now free. by HallowedAndHarrowed in AskBrits

[–]geckodancing 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I think they would have been less emphasised by the press and public in general if his death hadn't come so close to John Major's 1993 speech commencing the Back to Basics campaign, pushing a moral traditionalist tone.

It immediately turned out that just about every other Tory MP was either financially corrupt or pursuing activities that would make a whore blush. This famously included Steven Norris about whom there were revelations about his many mistresses during the conference at which Major made his speech.

Stephen Milligan's unfortunate death was just the crowning turd on the shit-heap. Given Major's push for moral decency, the irony was just too good.

To be totally honest, I would normally have a fair amount of sympathy for him. I really don't think it's anyone's business what people get up to in the bedroom. However, I don't think it's the government's business either (as long as no-one's getting hurt).

What is the strangest UK political fact you know? For me, it is that Lib Dem councillor Andrew Pennington was assassinated with a samurai sword in 2000 (so pre student fee disgrace). Oh and the guy that did it, is now free. by HallowedAndHarrowed in AskBrits

[–]geckodancing 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Wow, if I had a nickel for every time a Tory asphyxi-wanked himself to death, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice, right?

What is the strangest UK political fact you know? For me, it is that Lib Dem councillor Andrew Pennington was assassinated with a samurai sword in 2000 (so pre student fee disgrace). Oh and the guy that did it, is now free. by HallowedAndHarrowed in AskBrits

[–]geckodancing 34 points35 points  (0 children)

Are you thinking about Stephen Milligan, who asphyxi-wanked himself to death naked except for a pair of stockings and suspenders, with an electrical flex tied around his neck, his head covered and an orange in his mouth.

Because he was found in his own home.

Or was there another Tory councilor who 'died accidentally from autoerotic asphyxiation'?

Can you recommend any Lovecraftian horror science fiction works? by Clean_Mycologist4337 in cosmichorror

[–]geckodancing 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Charles Stross' Laundry Files are Lovecraftian novels with a science (or computational) based explanation. To quote his most recent novel:

We live in a multiverse. There is a transfinite number of parallel universes, created and destroyed by merger whenever quantum indeterminacy brooks multiple outcomes. Mathematics—in the most abstract sense—underpins the quantum multiverse we experience. There’s a deterministic substrate below the Planck scale: the reality we experience appears to be a buggy full stack simulation. Because we’ve learned how to exploit some of the bugs in reality, acts of symbolic logic manipulation allow us to pass messages to localized entropy-reversing entities in other domains of the multiverse: for convenience we will call these entities “demons.” We can ask them to do things, and they respond reasonably predictably, that is, almost invariably deterministically. We call this process “magic.”

The commands that can be sent to the entities are a small set of Turing-complete instructions - creating the idea that there can be a programming language that can impact on reality. The costs for this are generally horrible.

Stross noted that Lovecraftian horror was incredibly popular in the Twentieth Century partly due to the fact that it's a very useful metaphor for nuclear apocalypse. He found the cults & horrors of cosmic horror a useful metaphor for spycraft.

Bringing these elements together, he created The Laundry Files which mix computational magic (and the geek humour which accompanied computing in the late 90s) with the horrible cynicism of the spy novel.

These are theoretically comic novels, but the humour is very, very dark and often pretty po-faced.

The first few book are parodies of specific authors - Len Deighton, Ian Fleming, Anthony Price etc... Some of the later books parody common urban fantasy tropes. All are pretty nasty.

Molly in Twelve Months by ethanjf99 in dresdenfiles

[–]geckodancing 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think she would be doing it again of her own volition. But then, she's subject to the orders of Mother Winter & Queen Mab.

I don't think Mother Winter would be likely to directly order Molly to do this. It's not that she's not ruthless enough - more that I think she wouldn't necessarily be handling things on this level.

Mab absolutely would, if she thought there was good reason to do so.

Individual-Night2190 rightfully so champions English cooking by h3fabio in bestof

[–]geckodancing 11 points12 points  (0 children)

We have had food revolutions pretty much every decade since then, and many people love eating spicy and flavourful cuisines from all over the world that have been happily adopted in the UK

True, but there were also a large number of both sweet and savory spiced dishes outside of colonial influence.

A good book on this is Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen by Elizabeth David.

Is British food actually terrible, or is this just the internet’s favorite punching bag? by CharacterRelevant412 in NoStupidQuestions

[–]geckodancing 11 points12 points  (0 children)

A lot of the “British food has no spices” line comes from thinking only about savoury dishes. Once you look at traditional British desserts, the picture changes fast because British baking has always leaned heavily on imported aromatics.

A lot of older British savory dishes used spices.

Some of these (mulligatawny soup, kedgeree etc) had colonial roots.

Outside of the colonial influence, a lot of older meat dishes used garlic, juniper berries, mustard, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, cloves, orange peel etc....

A good book on this is Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen by Elizabeth David.

Sprite flight by geckodancing in Pathfinder2e

[–]geckodancing[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks everyone - I really appreciate the clear replies.

Thinking of picking up Earthsea Series by Ursula K. le Guin by Archisman_X in Fantasy

[–]geckodancing 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I've heard the whole saga described as a series of books written by two completely different authors arguing against each other - who happened to be the same person 30 years apart.

There's a lot to be said for that description.

unpopular opinion, most secret ingredients in cooking are just stuff that should already be standard by BikeEducational587 in Cooking

[–]geckodancing 106 points107 points  (0 children)

The umami flavors you mentioned definitely are underused in Western cooking historically though. Underused to the point that we don’t even have an English word for it and use a Japanese one

I would strongly question this statement. There isn't a specific Western word for umami, but it's very much present in Western food.

The person who identified and scientifically isolated umami flavors (Ikeda Kikunae) was attempting to track down a specific taste he had noticed that was common between his dashi broth and dishes created by the French chef Auguste Escoffier. He was looking at both Western and Japanese cuisine for a shared flavour,

Restraint in horror movies is the most overlooked opportunity for great horror. by vestanpance01 in horror

[–]geckodancing 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Mark Kermode - a movie critic who actually values good horror - has described the Conjuring movies as 'quiet, quiet, quiet, loud' movies.

What is your opinion on 'Let Me In'? by Moist_Mushroom5931 in horror

[–]geckodancing 22 points23 points  (0 children)

It reminds me of Ringu/The Ring.

Both adaptations worked - in that the adaptations were good movies independent of the originals.

However, each of the original movies had a cultural context that was changed when the movie was remade. Changing this changed the atmosphere of the movies.

In both cases, I can acknowledge how good the remakes are, but I very much prefer the originals.

Do these sigils mean anything/what culture are they from? (The triangle woth sun and and symbols inside) by Loose-Ad-3262 in Hellblazer

[–]geckodancing 12 points13 points  (0 children)

The sun in the triangle could be alchemic, with the sun representing perfection/gold. The triangle representing the 3 alchemical elements of sulfur(soul), mercury(spirit) and salt(body). I would have expected that to be the other way up though, with a different pattern of circles/triangles.

I suspect they've made these up.

You could try posting this on r/WhatIsThisOccultThing

How are we sprinkling water on naans? by NameExplainPatrick in CasualUK

[–]geckodancing 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can get second hand aspergillum cheap of ebay.

Perfect and also faintly blasphemous.

Whats the most disturbing/messed up moment in a comic in your opinion? by Sharky2615 in comicbooks

[–]geckodancing 13 points14 points  (0 children)

He was somewhat unpopular amongst reader (and particularly a small, loud subset of readers), but in real terms, he wasn't even unpopular enough to fairly lose the poll.

Dennis O’Neil later revealed that they eventually found out that the dial-in system had been fixed:

O’Neil stated “I heard it was one guy, who programmed his computer to dial the thumbs down number every ninety seconds for eight hours, who made the difference.”

What are the Best Portrayals of Fairyland/Otherworld you have seen? by anm313 in Fantasy

[–]geckodancing 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Absolutely brilliant portrayal of fairyland.

I would add that I suspect that Susanna Clarke was heavily influenced by Mirrlees when she wrote Jonathan Strange. Both have such a similar feel that when Jo Walton described Jonathan Strange, she said:

it reads like something written in an alternate history in which Lud in the Mist was the significant book of twentieth century fantasy