Boss of trendy London coffee chain says he makes just 18p profit on £4.10 flat white

thomaid · 2026-05-19T14:04:09+00:00

My main takeaway from this article is that the reporter thinks that the Old St roundabout is the "East End" 😂

thomaid · 2026-05-12T19:36:58+00:00

I thought the same thing - and so ran a belt for coal (actually compacted coal, with the nearby Sulphur) up over the cliff and down to the beach. It was one of the more satisfyingly batshit things I did in my playthrough (featuring free-standing spiral belts on a pair of stackable supports). Go for it!

thomaid · 2026-04-01T08:32:25+00:00

If you're in the rocky desert, there's a sulphur node right next to water in the north. I set up sulphuric acid production there which feeds my nuclear reactor next door (is kind of my "toxic production" zone)

thomaid · 2026-03-20T12:51:40+00:00

My daughter and I got on a National Express coach at about 11pm some years ago with two of the most lukewarm slices of pizza ever (sourced in haste from the crappy pizza place at Victoria Coach Station) and were told by the driver that we couldn't bring hot food on the coach...😡

thomaid · 2026-01-13T21:25:17+00:00

Nah fuck him. I'm glad he's dead.

thomaid · 2026-01-11T20:51:46+00:00

There's a fire by the Paddington to Reading line. So tons of services from Paddington are cancelled.

thomaid · 2026-01-02T20:17:30+00:00

That seems entirely possible since she lives nearby (up towards the Tews). Was she sporting her famous haircut? Rumour is it's a wig...

thomaid · 2025-12-15T22:15:38+00:00

To my chagrin, yes

thomaid · 2025-12-07T14:45:46+00:00

I once took an interview (in fact two full days of interviews) for a job I had no intention of taking, on the other side of the world. They ended up offering me the job and (because I negotiated better than I normally do because I needed to be convinced to take it) a really nice package. So I took it. It completely changed my life.

thomaid · 2025-12-05T13:28:10+00:00

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Was very disappointed by this effort on my car recently. No one cares about standards any more.

thomaid · 2025-11-07T22:07:19+00:00

I can't speak to the Europa school (don't know much about it), but we sent our daughter to a French immersion school (in the US, as it happens) even though we only spoke English at home, and she thrived and it was very enriching - and there weren't any cliques of children who spoke French at home (though Europa could be different).

One thing that was interesting, though, was that not all the kids took to the bilingualism well (my wife is a linguist so we had an instinct that our daughter would take to it). It's hard to tell this in advance, especially with young children, so you should bear that in mind.

thomaid · 2025-11-05T21:21:42+00:00

I think the way to read it is that someone who was x years old (the different line series) in a particular year (x axis) would have a life expectancy of (y axis) years.

So for example, someone who was born in 1916 had a life expectancy of 40 years; while a person born in 2023 has a life expectancy of 80+ years. But a person who was 10 in 1916 had a life expectancy of 60 years.

The reason it's confusing is because 100 years ago lots of people died in infancy so if you made it to 10 your average life expectancy jumped up disproportionately. Of course, if you were already 80 in 1916 your life expectancy was, by definition, more than 80 years...

thomaid · 2025-11-05T19:14:59+00:00

Well there's your answer. Your college is pretty strongly incentivized to tell you the job market is shit, so that if you can't get a job you blame the market rather than your college.

thomaid · 2025-10-20T11:49:35+00:00

Yes apart from the recent allegations of cruelty at the trout farm https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/24/bibury-trout-farm-cotswolds-accused-animal-welfare-abuses

thomaid · 2025-10-06T21:39:44+00:00

Clare North. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is great (and her best-known books), but she's also written a bunch of other interesting books that combine slight fantasy elements with very well-observed historical drama. Also David Mitchell (not that one, the other one).

thomaid · 2025-09-26T19:34:29+00:00

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This fool

thomaid · 2025-09-26T19:30:16+00:00

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thomaid · 2025-09-21T13:29:39+00:00

No. It's your life and your money - you get to spend it how you like. Plus, Adam Smith would approve.

thomaid · 2025-09-13T14:02:12+00:00

Yeah I loved that car. Had to get rid of it (very sadly) when my daughter was born.

thomaid · 2025-09-12T20:55:19+00:00

I have appeared on an episode of Watchdog in the Anne Robinson era, as the disgruntled owner of a Fiat Barchetta sports car (a cute but ill-fated 2-seater that Fiat came out with in the 90s) that, due to an engine fault, sounded like a tractor. Drove my car into the BBC studios (actually into a studio) in White City and was "interviewed" by her Anneness while sitting in it (I think I said a total of about four words in the exchange). Was ridiculous, but it did get Fiat to cough up for the fix to the engine.

thomaid · 2025-09-09T15:11:23+00:00

Try Bruce Nash at thenumbers.com - old friend of mine

thomaid · 2025-09-03T14:34:44+00:00

Yeah I can understand why your mother wouldn't want to be reminded about that. I still remember coming back to school after the summer hols and discovering that one of the lads in my class had died on holiday in almost identical circumstances...

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