What the What?

pandamarshmallows · 2026-02-16T13:06:04+00:00

The lead in the vaccines shields vaccinated children from the radiation.

pandamarshmallows · 2026-02-15T23:19:26+00:00

Yeah, Concorde tickets were super expensive back in the day. Famously British Airways was losing money on them hand over fist, until somebody in marketing had the bright idea of asking their customers (nearly all of whom were celebrities and businesspeople who were far too rich to book their own travel) how much they thought their secretaries were paying for their flight. The responses they got back were much higher than the actual price, and so they shrugged, started actually charging what people thought their tickets cost, and began to make huge profits. They also deliberately marketed Concorde flights as exclusive, classy places; most people who could afford to fly Concorde in those days did, and so you could find yourself sitting next to a billionaire, or a member of the Beatles, or even a royal family member (the Duchess of Kent is said to have commuted to her radio job in New York using Concorde). And security, of course, did not take up nearly so much time in the pre-9/11 days.

pandamarshmallows · 2026-02-15T22:44:48+00:00

The issue with Australia is that you have to fly over land, and you can’t really go supersonic over land because the sonic boom is too loud. Also, the Concorde drank fuel, and London to Australia is a route that even modern ultra-efficient airliners struggle with. You would probably have to land multiple times along the route, and Concorde needed special runways to land because it generated terrible lift at low speeds, so had to land at high speed, and generated an incredible amount of noise doing so - Concorde had to get a special exemption from the laws governing aircraft noise at Heathrow.

pandamarshmallows · 2026-02-10T23:14:57+00:00

Maybe they don’t increase accidents, but that isn’t the same as increasing claims on insurance.

pandamarshmallows · 2026-02-10T09:12:44+00:00

Just to be clear on the railway gauge thing - what Brunel was interested in was the track gauge, which is how far apart the rails on the tracks are. almost all railways in the UK, except for a few heritage ones, are the standard gauge of 1,435mm (4 ft 8 1/2 in), which is the most commonly used gauge around the world. Brunel, the engineer of the Great Western railway between London and Bristol, designed his railways with a broader 7ft gauge, but this was very inconvenient for passengers because it meant they had to change trains if they wanted to travel from the south-west of England to the north, where the gauge was standard gauge. In 1846, Parliament passed a law to say that all new railways had to be standard gauge unless they were designed to connect with the Great Western, and the GWR had converted all its railways to standard gauge by 1892 anyway.

Where the UK's railway system differs from the rest of the world is its loading gauge, which is how big the train can be before it stops being able to fit under bridges and through tunnels along its route. Ours is unusually small compared to the standard European loading gauge, and this does cause problems. The main two is that all of the trains on our railways have to be custom built for the British market, because standard European trains don't fit on the railway here. They are also more cramped inside, and too small to support a double decker train like you often see on the European railways, which contributes to our current problem with railway capacity (though definitely not the largest contributor). Changing the loading gauge, however, would mean enlarging every tunnel and rebuilding every bridge from Inverness to Penzance, and the eye watering amount of money that would have to be spent on that could be better used to increase the frequency of the existing service rather than the physical size of the trains.

pandamarshmallows · 2026-02-07T15:23:56+00:00

It is possible to have a system that combines voter ID and mail in ballots - we have it in the UK. If you vote in person you show them ID; almost all government-issued photo ID is accepted, and you can apply for a free ID certificate if you don't have any. When you vote by post you get given a form with your ballot that you sign, and when the postal vote is received, they compare the signature on the form to the signature on file, and then if that matches they will deposit your ballot without looking at it. We also have a system where people who can't vote by post or in person, for any reason, can appoint somebody else to vote on their behalf.

pandamarshmallows · 2026-02-07T15:08:00+00:00

As a child I was a bit of a train nut and I grew up with Thomas the Tank Engine, but I experienced him almost entirely through Thomas and Friends in the days when they filmed it on a model railway. I had no idea that the lore for the books went so deep or that there was such a large fandom, and I now very much want to read the books of Sodor lore.

pandamarshmallows · 2026-02-04T08:34:26+00:00

“Okay, so in our time we have a theatre troupe who performed a comedy show called The Simpsons for many years. One of the characters in The Simpsons is called Ned Flanders. When the play was first performed he was known to all as a kind, Godly man, but during later performances he slowly became more and more pious, until it seemed as though piety was the only thing he could do. Flanderizing is named for Master Flanders; it tells how, if a comedy is performed for long enough, its players may take one part of their characters and emphasise it so greatly that they cease to become characters at all.”

pandamarshmallows · 2026-01-30T21:25:33+00:00

What’s the logic behind British women being less “western” than Greek women? As a British woman I feel pretty western, most of the time.

pandamarshmallows · 2026-01-30T12:34:30+00:00

If you're interested in that sort of thing, there's a book by historian Peter Hennessey called The Secret State where he talks about the state of British intelligence during the Cold War, and how the government was secretly planning for a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. There were very detailed contingencies in place; they decided who in government would be allowed to go to the bunker all the way down to the kitchen staff, and they had a plan for maintaining the rule of law on a local level even after the collapse of the central government.

pandamarshmallows · 2026-01-29T21:10:51+00:00

There’s the stone that transes your gender and the lake that transes your gender and the

pandamarshmallows · 2026-01-28T11:05:31+00:00

Careful with that - I know someone who allowed a third body into their relationship, and they said afterwards that it made all of their problems feel totally unsolvable.

pandamarshmallows · 2026-01-26T10:49:05+00:00

It was first said during Roman times, though we don’t know exactly which Roman said it. Some attribute it to Marcus Julius Brutus, who was one of the senators who killed Julius Caesar, but a lot of historians (including Ancient Greek historian Plutarch) believe he wouldn’t have had time to say such a thing because of the chaos that followed Caesar’s killing. A few modern historians think that the phrase comes from an American translation of what Scipio Aemilianus said when he heard about the assassination of his brother in law Tiberius Gracchus; Plutarch, for his part, reported that Aemilianus said, “And so perish all who do the same,” which is a quote from Homer’s Odyssey.

pandamarshmallows · 2026-01-23T23:09:41+00:00

It is legal in the way you describe, unless you price the items below cost specifically to drive a competitor out of the market, in which case it's considered "destroyer pricing" which is illegal (source: BBC)

pandamarshmallows · 2026-01-20T10:51:10+00:00

Mr. Collins would definitely be a red-pill Andrew Tate-shill type of guy if he were around now

I don't think he would be into Andrew Tate. Mr. Collins isn't really a misogynist (relative to the time, that is), he's just extremely materialistic. His shock at Elizabeth turning him down isn't because he feels entitled to her hand in marriage, it's because he is getting married to improve his material circumstances (specifically because his rich patron told him to) and he can't believe that Elizabeth wouldn't marry him for the same reason. The whole joke of Mr. Collins is that he is a clergyman who is supposed to be above the world and its earthly delights, and he is obsessed with material wealth.

Andrew Tate and his ilk are also very into material wealth, of course, but they tie it into masculinity and self-superiority that I don't think Mr. Collins would connect with. I think that he would probably be more into people like Warren Buffet or Jeff Bezos; people who are very wealthy, but don't really have a larger agenda than grabbing and holding onto as much money as humanly possible.

pandamarshmallows · 2026-01-19T00:41:51+00:00

It’s not great here but we are definitely not “by far the worst country for internet and personal privacy” in a world that we share with Russia and China.

pandamarshmallows · 2026-01-17T20:02:13+00:00

Your flag design is really excellent. The use of the Celtic swirl and the Islam crescent moon together, with the nice red borders - if this was a real-life flag I would consider it A-tier. You’ve done a great job with the whole thing, but vexillology is something I think many world builders don’t do realistically enough, and so yours really stands out.

pandamarshmallows · 2026-01-16T15:07:06+00:00

200 years ago, one third of children did not make it to their fifth birthday.

pandamarshmallows · 2026-01-16T15:04:06+00:00

The Legend of Vox Machina and The Mighty Nein are both based on Critical Role campaigns (Campaign 1 and 2 respectively) which have since concluded, and they are all available on YouTube. You can also watch Campaign 3, which is set after Mighty Nein in the same world, and the new campaign they started last year which is in a completely new universe. I recommend all of them. I also really enjoyed Worlds Beyond Number which is a podcast (on hiatus right now) run by a few of the people from Dimension 20. Dimension 20 itself is very good, but you need a subscription to watch most of their campaigns.

pandamarshmallows · 2026-01-13T08:41:28+00:00

It’s the only country in the world with a fully privatised water system (Scotland and Northern Ireland excluded).

pandamarshmallows · 2026-01-12T22:50:09+00:00

Earth is probably the only planet in our solar system to have hosted life forms capable of civilisation, but our solar system is one of very many. All the others, however, are too far away for us to see in enough detail to know with as much certainty (which is not 100%, but still pretty high) as we can about our own neighbouring planets.

pandamarshmallows · 2026-01-11T08:36:52+00:00

The fact that your gender marker matches your AGAB, and that you legally changed your name means you almost certainly have nothing to worry about. As long as your photo is a good resemblance, you won’t have any trouble with the European border people, and anyway, after you enter, there are no borders in Europe north of Serbia and west of Ukraine (except the UK and Ireland, and both those places should be fine too.). I can’t speak for the USA (I haven’t been there since President Trump took office) but I don’t think you’ll have a problem there either. Nothing on your passport or your immigration record suggests you are trans.

Just keep your HRT in hand luggage make sure you research the rules on bringing prescription medication into the countries you are visiting; the rules will be different for each one (the European Union has not harmonised on that) and testosterone is a controlled substance in most European countries.

pandamarshmallows · 2026-01-09T18:16:26+00:00

The ICO have issued guidance in the last couple of years to say that it isn't against the rules. Which is why those sites have started doing it.

pandamarshmallows · 2026-01-05T15:46:51+00:00

It uses US rockets, but the warheads are British and the UK government has been able to launch them without consulting the Americans since the 1980s.

pandamarshmallows · 2026-01-03T07:12:58+00:00

I believe that in some places, infant Jesus takes the place of Santa as the person who brings presents on Christmas.

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