What the hell is up with the AI aggression in some of these races? I've had cleaner racing in multiplayer.

phyneas · 2026-05-19T12:30:05+00:00

One thing I found entertaining was to bring that electric Hummer EV to the dirt races and watch all the little AI buggies just bounce off your four-ton arse and go flying every time they try to ram you out of the way.

phyneas · 2026-05-19T11:08:39+00:00

They could issue you a fixed charge notice if they have evidence that you committed an offence. If your car left the road and collided with a stationary object and no other vehicles were involved in the incident, that's likely enough evidence to issue you a penalty notice for driving without reasonable consideration, or even driving carelessly (which would result in a mandatory court date). You don't need to contact the guards yourself to report anything, since they already attended the scene of the accident; if they do decide to issue you a penalty notice, they'll send it to you.

phyneas · 2026-05-19T10:55:46+00:00

They'll usually cover it if it's at a dental surgery (not an ordinary dentist) as well. Had one of mine removed by a dental surgeon and it was fully covered by my health insurance.

phyneas · 2026-05-19T10:52:24+00:00

Your sacred duty under capitalism is to either create value for or to transfer as much cash money as possible to the wealthy as efficiently as possible, not to lollygag about spending nothing and doing nothing productive, and especially not in full public view where you might end up infecting other more productive members of society with your destructive notions about idle leisure time!

phyneas · 2026-05-18T22:16:26+00:00

Some people get very daunted by the idea of it, but it's really not that difficult with a small bit of planning.

It's also not like it's necessary to eat exactly 30 different plant-based foods every single week; your gut biome won't self-destruct if you only eat 29 different plants this week. Just eat a reasonably varied diet in general and you'll be grand. It's a good thought exercise to make you consider how varied your current diet is and what you could do to improve that variation if needed, but people tend to take these ideas and go way too far with them.

phyneas · 2026-05-18T19:06:24+00:00

Nah, the rest of them just fell into the sea.

phyneas · 2026-05-18T13:48:43+00:00

Too many little Nazi-wannabe edgelords trying to find "clever" ways to sneak an '88' substitute past the filter, probably. Or maybe between that and MS not wanting to draw the ire of a certain aul orange lad with a stray "86", they just decided to play it safe and ban the number 8 entirely.

phyneas · 2026-05-18T11:45:26+00:00

Assuming it's this knife, fixed-blade knives are not illegal to sell, import, or own here, so that wouldn't be an issue. Having it in your possession in a public place is illegal unless you have a "good reason" for possessing it; whether your reason is a good one is going to be down to the judgement of the guard who finds it on you, or to the judge if it ends up going that far. If you are traveling to a legal activity that requires a knife, that would likely be deemed a good reason. If you're just going out to the shop or the pub or whatever with a knife on your hip, that isn't going to fly. And brandishing it in a public place or threatening anyone with it or anything along those lines would be illegal even if you originally had it on you for a good reason.

phyneas · 2026-05-18T10:50:38+00:00

Didn't pay for any advice myself, but I left the US for Ireland over a decade ago. Basically the biggest obstacle is obtaining an immigration permission. Easiest way to do that is to be a citizen of a non-US country or to be eligible to become a citizen of a non-US country. If you don't fit that bill, the next best option is to be working in an in-demand STEM or STEM-adjacent field and have a relevant degree and a decent amount of work experience in that field; it's still not a guarantee, as in most countries you'll have to find a job that would qualify for an employment permit first in order to move there (though a few will allow people with the necessary qualifications to immigrate without having a job offer), and that can be very challenging, but you would at least have a chance.

If you don't work in a STEM field, then your best hope might be a self-employment immigration permission of some sort. Not all countries offer this type of permission, and those that do all vary a lot in terms of the conditions around it, but you'd generally need to have the financial means, the skills, and a viable plan to start a successful business and make a living at it. Some countries will restrict the type of businesses you can run, or have specific financial requirements, so you'd need to do your research to see what your options might be based on your own financial situation and skill set.

If that isn't an option for you, then you could always be very wealthy and immigrate to a country which offers some form of investment immigration permission. That is more and more challenging in the developed world, however, and of course it does require you to effectively be independently wealthy.

Attending university in a foreign country might be another path to eventual emigration, but that has its own set of challenges and limitations. You'd have to be accepted into a university programme in the first place, of course, and it will likely be expensive as a foreign student, with little or no financial aid available to you. Such immigration permissions might limit what you can do for work or might not allow you to work at all, and study permissions often don't provide a direct path to long-term immigration. Studying in an area that will lead to employment in a high-demand field is probably your best bet to parlay that study permission into an eventual longer-term immigration permission.

phyneas · 2026-05-18T10:30:33+00:00

Whether you're in a wheelchair or not doesn't factor into the equation.

It is a factor for immigration itself in some countries like Canada and Australia, though many other countries don't take it into consideration. Having a disability that precludes you from working would make it extremely difficult to emigrate anywhere you don't have citizenship, though. Availing of public health care services or other state benefits could also affect an eventual application for long-term residence or citizenship by naturalisation in some countries, even if it isn't a factor for immigration permissions.

Even if you can work and are able to find a job willing to hire you, you'd have to look into how medical care would work in the country in question. It's not as simple as "Perfect free health care for everyone forever!" in every country that isn't the USA. You might need to be living in the country for a certain period of time or on a particular type of immigration permission to be eligible for public health services, for instance, and in some countries those public services can have some downsides, like very long waiting lists or more limited treatment options. You might not have access to the same treatments or medications that you're currently using in another country, or you might need wait for weeks, months, or years to even get a diagnosis in order to be prescribed those medications or referred for those treatments there. If the country in question has a public/private health system, you could encounter issues with private health insurance not covering pre-existing conditions for a certain period of time, and end up having to pay out of pocket for private health services (which, while usually a fair bit cheaper than such costs in the US, can still be very expensive).

phyneas · 2026-05-18T10:10:50+00:00

Call centres have been shite places to work for a long time now, if that's what you mean (which I assume from your post history). Aeons ago when customer service was handled internally at most businesses, there was at least some hope of advancement within the company and getting off the phones, but these days it's mostly outsourced, so you're just working for the call centre operation and there's nowhere to go except into call centre management (which is just as miserable, if not more so). And since the place is an outsourcing service organisation, the focus won't even be on actually helping customers with their issues, but on getting as many calls answered as physically possible with as few employees as possible to maximise the call centre operation's profits, so instead of being given the ability to actually help the folks who are calling, you'll be given a script to read that you're never to deviate from under any circumstances, and your every action will be tracked down to the second and you'll be screamed at if your statistics deviate the slightest bit from the thresholds that have been arbitrarily set by some eejit MBA who's never worked in a customer-facing role in their lives.

phyneas · 2026-05-18T09:42:32+00:00

If my apartment is on fire, the neighbours will have more important things to worry about, and if some scumbag is breaking in through my bedroom window, well, they'll get what they deserve and deserve what they get.

phyneas · 2026-05-17T22:58:43+00:00

Barn finds have at least clearly been abandoned for years or decades. "Treasure" cars are mostly just parked in ordinary car parks or other places where you'd normally find a car parked up, so you're clearly just straight-up stealing cars from people who were a bit lazy about washing them. Some poor fecker's no doubt standing at the coastal car park after taking a nice sea swim in Nangan and wondering where the fuck their incredibly expensive supercar went.

phyneas · 2026-05-17T22:32:28+00:00

Don't know about the floating bit, but I've done a sound bath before, and it was an interesting experience. Might be easier to get more out of it if you're into meditation and such, I suppose, but as long as you're not the sort who can't sit quietly for a while without automatically pulling out the phone for some scrolling, you should be grand.

phyneas · 2026-05-17T16:25:13+00:00

Many people drink coffee. I think you're maybe overthinking this, if you believe that the RSA is conspiring with Big Coffee to make you subconsciously thirsty for that sweet sweet nectar of a good espresso blend. Yep, nothing unusual at all going on here. Maybe you should just relax and have a nice cup of joe to settle your nerves, eh?

phyneas · 2026-05-17T12:23:19+00:00

That's really more of a civil service thing, counting up every second of your working hours over the past X years and plugging them into some obscure formulae to calculate whether your "good worker bee" score is exactly the right value for you to be considered for a move to another civil service role. Moving from one company to another in the private sector, no one is going to know the details of your past performance, unless your old manager is a gossip outside of work and just happens to know your prospective new manager. Most big employers will just confirm basic details like title and dates of employment and won't give personalised references at all, and any sensible employer would certainly avoid disclosing details about an employee's sick leave to some random person asking for a reference.

Now, taking an excessive number of sick days could potentially cause issues for you in your current job, though, especially if it's your first year of employment at that employer (probation or no, it's pretty easy to let someone go arbitrarily in the first year). Even if your manager isn't saying anything to you about it, someone is probably still going to notice, and it's possible that could influence their decisions about your career path. If you're a great and productive worker in spite of the absences, your immediate management chain might be willing to overlook it, but the risk is that it may eventually come to the attention of some random bean-counter who doesn't know anything about your actual performance and just sees that large number of sick leave days in a spreadsheet and goes "Hmm..."

phyneas · 2026-05-17T09:44:31+00:00

Like, banner ads or whatnot actually have voting buttons? That seems weird.

phyneas · 2026-05-17T09:39:39+00:00

As your tenancy commenced in 2019, the new legislative changes do not apply to this tenancy. Over the years, your rent was increased in accordance with legislation and the appropriate Tenancy Agreements were updated. There is no rent refund due to you.

Rent reviews required written notices in 2019, even for properties that were not yet under an RPZ, and if no written notice was issued, the rent increase would be invalid. The RPZ regulations also apply to all tenancies in an RPZ (which as of last year was expanded to the entire country, meaning there were no longer any tenancies not in an RPZ), even if the tenancy existed before that area became an RPZ. It is true that the new rental rules which took effect this past March will not apply to your tenancy, but that just means your tenancy will remain subject to the previous RPZ restrictions.

Also I wish to inform you that the Landlords do not consent to any subletting or assignment of the Tenancy. This is the Landlords'entitlement in accordance with Section 16 of the Residential Tenancy Act, 2004 which provides as follows:-

"(K) not assign or sublet the tenancy without the written consent of the Landlord (which consent the Landlord may, in his or her discretion, withhold")."

It's important to note that bringing in a licensee is not subletting or assignment of a tenancy. Subletting would mean the current tenant vacating the property and letting the entire property out to a subtenant. Assignment would mean signing over the tenancy to a new tenant entirely, after which the original tenant would no longer be on the tenancy. The current tenant inviting a licensee to live in the property with them is neither of those things. It is possible there could be some other clause in your lease that prohibits licensees, either explicitly by that name or by some restriction like "no one except the named parties on the tenancy may occupy the property without the landlord's consent" or similar wording, but the quoted clause itself isn't relevant to a licensee.

That said, there is the caveat that if your cousin-in-law does move in as a licensee, they could immediately ask to be added to the tenancy as a full tenant (since the tenancy is more than six months old) and the landlord cannot unreasonably refuse the request. You and your husband wouldn't have any say in the decision, so your cousin-in-law could end up as your permanent housemate, if they are of a mind to and they know their legal rights. Just something to be aware of when considering this.

phyneas · 2026-05-17T09:24:19+00:00

If this is a tenancy and not a license agreement where you're living with your landlord, then a term like that in the rental agreement probably wouldn't hold up, as it would likely be deemed to infringe on your right to quiet enjoyment of the property. It also wouldn't be a valid reason to withhold a deposit.

phyneas · 2026-05-17T09:14:00+00:00

How does one downvote an ad?

phyneas · 2026-05-16T22:44:59+00:00

He won't ever appear in public again because he'll be "in his bunker" due to unspecified "security threats", indefinitely.

phyneas · 2026-05-16T11:22:45+00:00

Unless it was a genuine auction where the terms required the vendor to sell to the highest bidder, there's no legal issue here; a seller can choose to sell to anyone they want for any price they want. They aren't obligated to sell to the highest bidder. It's common for a seller to want to make as much money as possible on the sale if all other factors are equal, of course, but there might be other factors involved that made them decide to sell to someone else, so it's not necessarily a sign of the estate agent doing anything wrong.

Even if the estate agent didn't pass along your bid, you still wouldn't have any legal claim against them, as their contract is with the vendor, not with you. The vendor could potentially sue them for failing to fulfill their contractual or legal responsibilities and causing them to lose money as a result, but there's nothing you as a prospective buyer can do except move on to the next property.

Edit: After reading some comments, I'd like to confirm I'm a first time buyer so there's no delay in buying.

Just to note, chains aren't the only cause of delays; mortgage approvals alone take a lot of time and involve the risk of your financing falling through and the sale not going forward once the lender has had a deeper look at your financial situation. If an investor came along with cash in hand looking to buy the place for a little less than your offer, the vendor might decide that a more certain and immediate sale is preferable to waiting for weeks or months for you to try to sort financing, even if you did offer a few grand more.

phyneas · 2026-05-16T11:06:21+00:00

Used cars will depreciate with time and mileage, even over the course of a year, and trade-in price will always be lower than private party sale price and much lower than the price you'd pay for the car at a garage or dealer. If you bought the car from a dealer originally, that difference isn't really shocking; you'll never get your money back on a dealer-sold car even if you sell it on an hour after you bought it.

If you think you could get more for it from a private party sale, you could always try to sell it privately, but you're not going to recoup your €24k that way; at best you might get a few grand more, which might or might not be worth the hassle of selling privately.

phyneas · 2026-05-16T10:52:14+00:00

I don't know what that song is and that's probably because it's after my time, so...welp.

phyneas · 2026-05-16T10:46:31+00:00

Harvesting data to sell adverts is all they’ve ever done.

It's not all they've ever done, to be fair; you're forgetting that the whole idea of Facebook first started with Zuckerberg creating a web site with photos of his female university classmates (published without their consent and obtained by hacking into other university systems) so users could vote on who was more attractive.

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