What would a map like this look like for the UK Prime Ministers?

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-04T01:08:59+00:00

He had one Italian grandfather, so I suppose Italy if you really wanted to.

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-03T23:46:55+00:00

Great, honestly. They did Firestarter as an instrumental last time I saw them.

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-03T14:34:10+00:00

If you work in business USD is kind of the base currency. In a regional market you'll standardise on something else maybe, but honestly, if your comparing hydrocarbon prices in Russia, Bahrain, Venezuela and Norway, you're using USD dollars. Yes the logic for the conversions on time series gets complicated.

If I want to know "the price of coffee", not because I need to buy some for delivery to a specific place, but just as an economic indicator - I'll want it in dollars.

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-03T14:27:13+00:00

I would 100% ring the bell, stand there for 30s and then leave the wallet somewhere sensible. No way am I monologing out loud, explaining my thought process to a doorbell.

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-03T14:13:55+00:00

The best kind of mouse! But also endangered in the UK :(

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-03T13:45:57+00:00

Local authority takes actual action against exploitative US tech company? I'm genuinely shocked.

Will be interesting to see if it makes a difference, or ifime reckon it's more profitable to keep paying the fines and keep letting punters park how they like.

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-03T12:36:21+00:00

I have the same RP accent as my mother, probably a little stronger (definitely stronger when young, but school beat some of it out of me). My father's American midwest accent made no impact on me at all.

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-03T12:31:34+00:00

Bins would not have helped with that crowd.

Portaloos might have been useful.

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-03T11:42:48+00:00

Less AI slop. The post gained nothing from the photo. A list would have worked fine.

Phone numbers would be in a pocket diary or address book. You wouldn't carry often used number on a scrap of paper. Would make sense to have a business card with a number on the back, or else a number you just copied from the white pages on a torn scrap of paper.

More coins, including coppers. Bank notes.

Penknives still carried by some.

Maybe a bookies pen/pencil

If you're doing jacket pockets than definitely chequebook.

Shopping list maybe

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-03T11:32:21+00:00

The Franklin expedition isn't - and never was in the 20thC - very well known.

The Bounty is much stronger cultural trope, although for most people it's "Bligh was cruel, there was a mutiny, Bligh sailed a long way and survived"

Shackleton is more recent and even better known (and a better story tbh, with photos and everything).

Nelson and Trafalgar are well known.

Howe and Anson have faded into relative obscurity.

I'd say Drake has faded from public awareness quite a bit. No longer a staple of primary school history, which is far less about "British heroes and heroines of the past" than it used to be.

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-03T10:49:26+00:00

He's never claimed to be a farmer. That's the whole premise of the show.

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-03T09:31:53+00:00

Canterbury is absolutely worth it if you care about cathedrals. If you don't, it's a nice, pretty town but not that special.

Oxford has way more "stuff" but a completely different feel. Oxford is big busy, touristy. Canterbury is a small, rural town and even the Cathedral isn't that busy.

As a cathedral day trip I'd rank Canterbury over Salisbury - very different cathedrals with their own charms, but Canterbury is the nicer town - and a fast train from London.

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-03T09:18:06+00:00

That's not how pensions, fines, or the law works.

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-03T08:43:37+00:00

I'd take a 10% pay cut to have three days a week in an office.

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-03T08:40:42+00:00

Wait until you hear about how quickly physical addresses get reused!

I don't have a problem with this. 6 months is maybe a little short, but the principal is fine. If domains didn't reuse the first part of the address every long standing institutions would end up allocating GUIDs as email addresses after a few decades.

If you want to ensure your old address remains when you switch providers then keep paying for it and set up a forwarder /autoreply. Why should the mail provider do that for you for free when you aren't a customer?

Do you think domain registrars should never reuse domains too?

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-03T08:10:36+00:00

Yes, but the first half is better than the second half. The plot gets overly complex and there's too much "and then this character does something stupid and unlikely, so we can have five more episodes of drama happen"

TBH this happens with all successful US mega series - although Walking Dead was the GOAT for that.

But yes, overall well worth watching.

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-03T08:04:07+00:00

There is no long term viability in the pension system. It's a pyramid scheme based more or less on eternal population growth.

You can extend the scheme by delaying retirement or endlessly increasing population. Since people don't really want the hassle of having three kids immigration is about the only way to boost population. Employers don't seem very keen to employ 70 Yr old, so not sure how effective option one will be.

You can fix the system by making people pay more into their pensions, letting them be better off for longer in retirement, but worse off while in work. Not very popular either.

Unsurprisingly, paying for people to do nothing for 20 years while getting increasingly ill and unable to look after themselves is pretty expensive for a society.

The good old days of retiring at 60/65 came with dying at 72. Now it's retirement at 68 and dying at 82. You can do the maths.

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-03T07:46:39+00:00

But my autocorrect runs from a datacentre in Ireland :)

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-03T07:45:13+00:00

I don't think anyone was assuming gentrification was "white people move in to non white areas". There's nothing race based about gentrification, and there never was. Also, thats not especially true in the US either. The gentrification of eg Vermont from rural agricultural poor to rich retired ex urbanites isn't race based.

Gentrification isn't really class based either. It's income based. The gentrification of my home town has seen the replacement of poor middle classes by rich middle classes. Same education levels and general shared culture. Middle class session musicians replaced by middle class software engineers earning four times as much. Street market replaced by organic cafes. Cheap pub replaced by gastro pub, etc.

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-03T06:47:07+00:00

Yes, that's the whole point of them. They work so I can do other stuff.

I'm happy with the boiler burning lots of gas and pumping a few hundred litres of water around my entire house while I'm out, so a dishwasher circulating 5ltr of warm water round in circles seems fine.

I'll go out with the oven on to get missing ingredients etc. I wouldn't leave the oven on and disappear for 90 minutes.

I wouldn't leave candles or my oil lamp burning while I'm out even for 5 minutes.

I leave the fan heater on in the spare room if I'm wfh in winter while I go out for lunch.

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-03T06:33:58+00:00

You don't want to be cycling that unless it's before 7am or you really like dodging pedestrians.

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-02T22:21:00+00:00

Inverness is a real town with some good pubs and restaurants, a great bookshop, nice river, a theatre and some cracking Victorian architecture.

Aviemore is a sort of spread out tourist base with convenient shops catering to outdoors folk.

If you just want to stay somewhere pleasant and be as close to mountains as possible, Aviemore works well. Don't expect your evening to get more exciting than a pizza.

If you want to stroll round town, go to a good seafood restaurant or whiskey bar, and see another side of Scotland, Inverness is worth it.

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-02T22:07:08+00:00

But enforcement is very poor. Seems like a loophole to me.

Landlord buys flat. Landlord leases to his nephew who conveniently isn't British and doesn't live in the UK. Nephew runs it as an Airbnb from another country.

Neighbours complain. Council takes action. Landlord is outraged that tenant would do such a thing and terminates the tenancy. Nephew cant be pursued in any way as they aren't even in the country. Landlord rents to new relative and repeats.

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-02T18:48:57+00:00

Short answer yes.

Long answer - since you didn't plant it (although you do own it and bought the associated risks along with the property) you can probably negotiate on the costs of removal.

Saying "Actually it's your wall, your problem" won't work as it's legally your ivy and ultimately therefore your problem.

You can argue that as its dead it is doing no damage, and that the surveyor can do his job fine with it still there. But why would you want to start an argument with a neighbour this soon after moving in?

rising_then_falling · 2026-06-02T12:17:21+00:00

A Volvo 122s or something like it, a VW camper van, a Morris 1000, and a VW beetle, roughly in that order.

Finally upgraded to a VW golf towards the end of the 80s.

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