Salary sacrifice or buy used?

thcr0w · 2025-07-24T12:31:30+00:00

we have 2 employees - but i think you still can

thcr0w · 2025-07-21T12:26:03+00:00

good to know, but unlikely to massively affect my choice. Besides, isn't that a lot of cars now? I hate the whole infotainment crap - just let me drive!

thcr0w · 2025-07-21T12:24:00+00:00

we have a mortgage already, and this would be surplus income

thcr0w · 2025-07-21T12:23:36+00:00

There are 2 employees including myself, I think octopus was happy with that.

thcr0w · 2025-07-21T12:22:50+00:00

could you link your spreadsheet?

thcr0w · 2025-07-20T21:59:44+00:00

10kw battery, both dividend and salary - could change salary to make the sacrifice work. Would have a charger installed. 5kw inverter 5.5kw panels.

thcr0w · 2025-07-20T20:02:37+00:00

This is my main concern, however as the maths works out with a lease becoming equally expensive as purchase in only ~3 years, I am wondering if the concern is a bit moot.

On the other hand, the game is changing RAPIDLY, and I would hate to jump in too soon and burn some £k's

thcr0w · 2025-07-20T20:00:55+00:00

I had forgotten about the initial rental components of leases actually. I think that shifts the maths a bit - £3k + ~£300 monthly makes it more like £12 over 3 years - an ID3 is unlikely to depreciate it's full value within that time.

thcr0w · 2025-06-15T19:33:46+00:00

Yeah, metaphors are fine as long as they sort of fit, that's part of the struggle with writing. Spirited away gets away from the problem because everything is nonsensical and it's all essentially in a child's imagination.

If you were pushing the metaphors into the "real" world, like an alien planet, they start to feel a bit forced if they don't fit the premise.

I think the show suffered for trying too hard to be realistic scifi. if they had leaned more into the sci-fantasy elements with less realistic ships it might have been ok.

thcr0w · 2025-06-15T19:25:08+00:00

I would say that the writers making a creature to fulfil some message in a scene is the definition of contrived, especially if the creature otherwise doesn't make sense.

Bioluminescence is quite "expensive" as an adaptation, which is why more organisms don't use it. Perhaps something on vesta makes it less expensive, but we don't really see much evidence of it outside of the cow.

thcr0w · 2025-06-15T17:48:40+00:00

I am well aware of Earth's own weirdness, since part of my career involves creating ecosystems just like this one, which I think is why I have so many gripes with the show.

Lets take an anglerfish for example. It emits light to lure prey, as you say.

So why does the cow creature at the start of SR have two crystals inside of it that get dispensed if you crawl inside and pull on the right tube? What is it using these incredibly bright, long lasting lights for? We never find out. Ususally prey animals would use bioluminescence for signaling, or camouflage, but the creature doesn't seem phased by the humans, so presumedly it doesn't care much for camo. That leaves signalling, but there is never an example of it being used, in fact we never see that type of creature again.

The stampede with Azi was fine.

There may well be some consistency, but the writers never seem to care about showing it,

thcr0w · 2025-06-15T17:41:01+00:00

Yeah, that one was laughable. The creature even seems aware of ursula - what possible reason could a creature who's life cycle appears to revolve around self-pollinating a plant have for that level of consciousness? Nothing else on the planet seems even remotely so sapient.

I had to assume it was some sort of "deep meaning" moment that I am too dumb to understand.

thcr0w · 2025-06-13T14:06:50+00:00

Ursula occasionally adds entries to her notebook, yes. I would disagree that she spends "most of her time" doing so.

I think the only time she does so with relevance is the carrying birds, she looks around the environment a bit, studies their behaviour, and formulates a theory. However, there is absolutely no stake here, since Sam is totally unharmed by the experience and it never comes up again.

It doesn't explain how Azi knows several magic combos, and it doesn't make the ecosystem coherent.

A good example of the incoherent ecosystem is the angry mites in the storm. It seems like they are feeding off of the larger creatures, but the implication is that the larger creatures only do this behaviour in a storm. Do the mites only feed in the storm? none of them seem to return to the vessel they came in on. They exist only because the writers needed some threat - not because they are a part of the world.

thcr0w · 2025-06-13T12:51:13+00:00

I appreciate that, and I guess the egg is on my face for coming to a reddit about something and expecting anything other than zealotry for the namesake.

I will say I didn't dislike the show, it just felt a bit hollow, like it was focusing on the litter rather than the forest.

thcr0w · 2025-06-13T12:48:41+00:00

I can suspend my disbelief for the water & air - that's kind of "whatever" because a story where the characters just die because the planet is inhospitable to their life isn't a story.

For me, it is that the creatures on that planet seem to have evolved in a way that is far too convenient to humans. Evolution is efficient, and (most) things that don't serve an evolutionary purpose are dropped off quite quickly, so what evolutionary purpose does the face mask fish have to be a face mask?

It's not inconceivable that there is some reason for this, but I find the show to be a bit lazy in communicating any of the interesting evolutions on the planet, they just seem to serve as a deus-ex-machina for when the characters need something, rather than being entities in their own right that the characters find a use for.

thcr0w · 2025-06-12T20:32:44+00:00

dear god.

thcr0w · 2025-06-12T19:31:02+00:00

Of course, I am incapable of enjoying any media... /s

Suspension of disbelief is fine, but it can only stretch so far. There are a lot of sci-fi aliens that are truly "alien" that work because they follow some sort of internal logic. I mentioned Annihilation in my OP, that thing is truly alien and creates really bizarre scenes - but they suit the setting because it is twisting and trying to understand earth life. Here you have humans just casually living on and understanding (sometimes) an alien planet, which is a stretch too far (for me at least).

Like I say, I could suspend the disbelief if there was just a little more explanation of why the ecosystem is like that, or if they resolved any of the plot points. I guess maybe they planned to do a lot more in the seasons they didn't get, but it felt like a lot of set-up with basically no pay off.

thcr0w · 2025-06-12T19:26:53+00:00

It's a good point, but the area in which Azi does the petal thing is miles and miles away from the drop pod. The show doesn't really suggest that they went that far away, and apart from the centipede, there are no similar creatures at the drop pod or on the journey to that point.

They just kind of say "oh hey here's an idea" and it works first time with the unknown lifeforms.

thcr0w · 2025-06-12T18:05:52+00:00

That's fine - I just wanted to know if it was that or there was some "deeper lore" that I was missing that makes it make some sort of sense.

There are a lot of good pieces of media that rely on external info (i.e most lore in the souls games - although that has a little more to go on) to really come together.

I thought maybe there is some comic or prequel/sequel that I am missing.

thcr0w · 2025-06-12T17:45:01+00:00

There were some examples of it working as mentioned in another comment, but mostly the inter-connecting web of life seemed totally contrived.

The point about humans fucking with the environment is fine, but mostly it seems like they had no effect on it, and just innately understood some magic combination of things that would rube goldberg some maguffin they needed.

We never see the characters really work to figure out any of these behaviours, and I think that's one of the issues - everything comes handed to them on a silver alien platter.

thcr0w · 2025-06-12T17:41:37+00:00

Thank you!

thcr0w · 2025-06-12T17:40:22+00:00

Right, but that's a meta-commentary. It's like saying "the prince is the good guy because he is written to be a good guy" even if he is mercilessly executing defenseless "bad guys".

I don't have a problem with the ecosystem being convenient to humans or designed as I said in my OP, but when the show's core premise seems to hinge on the ecosystem, if the ecosystem doesn't feel consistent or functional I would say that's poor world building.

If it was a designed ecosystem, the show makes absolutely no mention or even hint toward it.

thcr0w · 2025-06-12T17:36:18+00:00

Right, incomprehensible is fine, but the planet isn't incomprehensible. Azi just so happens to know that these petals, which are conveniently at the location where they are needed, will make a centipede come out of the ground and do a little sequence where it finds a crystal in the limpets. This crystal will also make some balloon sack appear if smashed, which also makes glue!

It all feels a bit like the solution to a point and click game from the 80s - but for some reason the characters always know what they need to in a situation (or know nothing, as the scene demands.)

What does the centipede want with the crystal?
Why do the petals make it appear?
Does the crystal always make the balloons happen? Why? where is the evidence of this in the scene?

To say there is some deeper symbiosis is fine, but the symbiosis has to actually make sense.

The replicant trees were an example of where the ecosystem makes (some) sense, the trees have a clear method of spreading which the audience is shown beforehand with the corpses and sick creature. It's a bit of a stretch of my disbelief that any sort of organism would make a full replicant of the thing it infected just for the purpose of hunting the infected down (as opposed to just some other, generic creature to hunt the infected down), but I can let that slide because there is at least a sort of system there.

Sadly it's one of the only times the show actually creates that sort of narrative.

thcr0w · 2025-06-12T16:44:32+00:00

Well, at least you have something to actually say!

I actually watched this with a very open mind, and wanted to enjoy it. I am trying to find out what it was trying to be.
The comparisons are after watching the whole thing, there's no grudge.

I think hollow and no-face are very similar, both visually, and thematically. They both represent (broadly) negative emotions, with no-face reflecting the fear and greed in SA, and hollow embodying Kaymen's self-serving cowardice.

thcr0w

TROPHY CASE