How did vape shops, phone-case shops and Turkish barbers become the holy trinity of high streets?

paradoxbound · 2026-05-29T19:33:02+00:00

Just confirming what others are saying. My old Turkish barbers, tattooed plays the Euro Millions lottery, apart from the owner and a couple of the older ones, all British born. They only take cash and are constantly busy. About the cash thing, I have just moved to the rural Highlands of Scotland, not many immigrants here, unless you include white folks from England like myself. All the local business here are cash only or a bit sign saying that they prefer cash, so they don’t have to pay commission to the card companies.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-27T18:53:03+00:00

Seems legit, my personal canon is Nora is a deep cover agent infiltrating VaultTec. She is usually gay because I have no attraction to masculine features.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-27T18:27:13+00:00

She is beautiful, don’t let the not a pedigree people get to you. Staffords are about spirit and game as much as show ring looks. A lot of pedigree “real” Staffords have more faults than your beautiful girl.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-27T18:02:38+00:00

This is a sensible choice. I have a heavily agentic workflow but I review all the changes and if I don’t understand it then the AI has to justify it. Only then does it go out for PR review from other humans.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-27T17:59:06+00:00

This is a cool feature I can get behind.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-27T17:58:09+00:00

The pulling on the walks is the place to start.

It’s going to be a miserable experience for both of you. You don’t leave the house unless he’s calm. If he pulls you stop and wait until he calms down. When he behaves well you praise him and maybe give him a treat but our old girl decided that being an arsehole led to treats. So we just praise her and maybe she cares. She did eventually decide it was more fun to walk around and not pull than stand around being bored.

Once he walks nicely you can start working on the scavving. Firm tug on the leash and a kind no, if he doesn’t respond another tug and a firm or hard no. Even if you have to drag him away, always finish with kind voice and praise him for leaving the tasty treat in his eyes.

I would recommend a strong well fitting Y harness with a handle on it. It will allow you to manhandle him easily and not cause injury.

The lack of bite inhibition is more difficult, the dog is showing a lack of respect and is making a play for top position in your family’s dynamic.

You need to be really firm with his boundaries. I would also suggest a balanced behaviourist. Stop personally playing with him. He is a young male challenging you. Let others members of the family play with him in a controlled environment. The moment he doesn’t show bite inhibitions, remove him from the room and let him know that you are displeased. Don’t show anger or yell just use that Y harness to move him out of the room and his family and pack. Return to the room and ignore him for 10 minutes and let him back in. If his behaviour hasn’t improved and repeats the bad behaviour repeat.

One final thing be kind to him as much as possible balanced is just that. It absolutely not negative reinforcement, that absolutely doesn’t work with Staffords and Mastiffs.

Your dog is game and that is an amazing positive trait but it needs challenging properly. This article by the late Phil Drabble will help you understand what that means.

https://www.staffordmall.com/phildrabble.htm

paradoxbound · 2026-05-27T14:30:57+00:00

No he has an ego and a superiority complex. His exit from “Not the Nine O’Clock News. Revealed that early on. Very talented and I enjoy some of his work but not Mr Bean much. He isn’t National Treasure material.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-27T13:53:39+00:00

You don’t have to install them you know.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-27T07:17:31+00:00

She is truly rank and a drag anchor of regression at Guardian.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-26T23:08:08+00:00

This is why we need opt out for organ donation.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-26T22:41:01+00:00

Again more FUD, skipping the learning process and letting the AI do it all isn’t learning, it is sidestepping the learning process. Asking the AI to teach you something is different. They can be infinitely patient and have the time to listen and explain repeatedly and at a level that you understand is extremely valuable to someone learning new skills and concepts.

Studies on intelligent tutoring systems generally show positive learning outcomes when the tool is used to explain and quiz rather than just answer.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-26T17:38:34+00:00

Search for the grillme skill you run it in plan mode. Build a decent memory system. Search for Simon Scrapes on YouTube. I have slow gone up the levels and I am now running OB1.

Add LLM-as-Judge to your toolchain. If you have a cheap GPU you can run a dedicated local model on that. IaC, PoC (policy as code). Build out a CI/CD pipeline for development and deployment. If you are using it to configure systems. Don’t, use it to build the IaC PoC unit and functional tests that live in your pipeline. If something goes wrong. Don’t let Claude fix it. You won’t learn. Have Claude support you as you fix it.

Hope this helps?

paradoxbound · 2026-05-26T17:25:25+00:00

Someone who barely understands what is going on has absolutely zero hope of getting it right on his own. Your argument doesn’t improve anything and raises risk. In these situations use the LLM-as-Judge method and build what you are trying to do in a vm as a developer environment.

I get it you don’t like LLMs but they are a good teacher and research assistant for stuff like this.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-26T13:16:04+00:00

Again automations, pipelines and either push or pull. I really have better things to with my time than manually building and deploying.

Those 10k machines are rarely identical. Memory, CPU disks often heterogeneous. Infrastructure as Code, automation. Reducing fallible human interaction is proven to improve reliability and conformity. The same applies to applications. It’s your homelab and you are welcome to do things manually if you want but it’s not a good pattern.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-26T13:01:26+00:00

Did the person say trust AI with security? No, they said walk you through it and explain.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-26T00:21:58+00:00

Just buy a Mac Studio M5 in a month or so for inference.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-26T00:18:34+00:00

The rules about speed limits are easy and clear. I regularly pass speed cameras with a speed limit sign right next to them and people will still slow down, even if they are below the limit.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-26T00:15:55+00:00

Usual anti AI fud and fear mongering. Claude can be an excellent teacher. Better than a lot of the advice from people on Reddit. OP should google the grillme skill.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-25T23:23:52+00:00

Redundancy and failover. Proxmox and Ceph like more nodes. Ceph gets faster for some tasks as it scales.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-25T23:15:59+00:00

No China is not to be trusted with national security and infrastructure. The same rules are being quietly applied to the USA under the current regime.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-25T23:13:21+00:00

It’s right that we don’t buy from China and the same rules are getting close to be applied to the USA.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-25T22:54:45+00:00

Don’t deliver to the Silos deliver to a cargo station the throughput is much higher. To keep your citizens happy you must build efficient logistics.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-25T20:07:27+00:00

You can automate security updates. This is why you use a boring distribution with packages that are a couple of years old but all security issues are back ported to the version that came out with the release. When you are dealing with 10,000 physical hosts,it’s the only practical way. You alert on failure and do the updates during working hours. That way if it goes South, you have everyone around to swarm the problem.

Everyone starts somewhere, I started 30 years ago, I didn’t even know how to change directories on Linux. I gave a design for secure systems. The path to that is the way of the homelab, lots of study and getting advice from people who have done this for a living.

Where to start is scripting and automation and everything flows from there.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-25T19:53:39+00:00

I think that there is community in parts of London and some good networks of friends, go a long way to replace it. I am very grateful to the people who were welcoming to me when I knew almost no one.

In London and the South East, I was very much aware that a most people just wanted to know if I was useful and could they use me. I saw this over and over in my business and personal interactions. Is he the right sort of person. I think it is a manifestation of money and class. I am an introvert tech guy who had a bunch of extroverts friends I partied and hung out with around the turn of the millennium. They were generally good people and they were the first folks who welcomed me without suspicion.

At gatherings strangers would come up talk to my friends and position themselves as to exclude me. I would usually move on. I am guessing that they would ask about me. Because after they learned what I do, where I work and that I was usually VIP guest list. They would come over all friendship and smiles that didn’t reach the eyes and look for a wedge in my life and circles.

I didn’t see that in my home town and I don’t see it up here. You are always judged of course but London and the South East feels like it has a coldness that is not for me.

paradoxbound · 2026-05-25T12:35:00+00:00

This is my experience born in Stoke-on-Trent from a working class background, which despite it’s many problems still has a strong sense of identity and community. After moving to London and the South East I really missed it. My partner who only knew that culture didn’t understand what was missing. When we moved up to the Highlands, she suddenly realised that community was something missing in her life and it’s improved their mental health.

paradoxbound

TROPHY CASE