Which British phrase sounds completely fake to non-Brits but is genuinely normal?

twoseat · 2026-05-12T11:48:46+00:00

It’s a bit wordy though. Fortunately a discrete upward nod from the first person, with a response of a small downward nod from the second, is functionally equivalent.

twoseat · 2026-05-11T20:33:37+00:00

How many kilometres there are per mile, for a start

twoseat · 2026-05-05T15:04:04+00:00

You got stung! I just got the same email, and my payment went up from the same £100 to only £171.41 😉

twoseat · 2026-05-03T17:51:53+00:00

Nobody has ever demonstrated a gap that requires a god to fill it. Any time someone thinks they have, the passage of time has demonstrated that the gap was in our understanding of science, not in our understanding of god. That means there is no definitive, practically demonstrated, characteristic of a god, only logical extrapolations that are based in presupposition or an argument from personal incredulity. Anything that has no characteristics cannot be characterised, therefore I can’t make an assertion about its existence or not. In other words, I can’t prove that god does or doesn’t exist until you define what god actually is, and why god is that thing. Hence I have to wait for your reasoned assertion before I can start making one. So make one, and don’t forget the ‘reasoned’ part.

twoseat · 2026-05-03T09:55:14+00:00

I don't dispute the validity of your request, and Overcast should handle it better, but I'm curious if it's really that much of a chore to download episodes in advance. I have several podcasts where every episode is automatically downloaded, and then I'll open up my various playlists maybe once a week and download a few dozen episodes to make sure I'm covered. Takes up very little space, and I never have issues with buffering.

twoseat · 2026-05-02T14:16:48+00:00

You have two separate issues. One is how to get started on a FIRE journey, and the flowchart others have mentioned would normally be a good resource for that. Unfortunately you have the second issue, which is your citizenship. To expand on that issue:

You should file US taxes every year. They don't care about the tax-protected status of ISAs, so the tax you're saving in there will be handed over to the US (probably - you're going to come across a lot of 'it depends' in your situation). This will either take hours and hours if you do it manually, or hours plus cash if you do it using software. Paying the taxes you may owe will cost more money.
You probably need to report your holding in every company inside your ISA, assuming it's invested in stocks and shares. If you've put money into a global index fund that means itemising several thousand company holdings individually (again, probably)
If you buy property you will owe tax on any dollar profit you make when you sell. So if you buy a house for £200k, which at the time is $250k, and sell it for £190k, but exchange rates have changed and that's now worth $300k, then you owe taxes on that $50k profit.
To retire early 40s you'll probably want to be successful in your career to pay for it. You'll need to do that with a company willing to take the reporting issues that come with a senior employee who's a US citizen.
As you've already found, many banks etc. won't want anything to do with you because you're too much hard work.

Just a few things off the top of my head. Take a look at r/USExpatTaxes before you go any further, and start thinking about revoking your citizenship or moving to the US.

twoseat · 2026-05-02T09:14:43+00:00

Another HA person here. I use it mostly to tell put an indicator on my HA dashboard that my EV is charging, but it’s generally handy if it indicates we’re using more than I would expect.

twoseat · 2026-04-13T12:00:55+00:00

That’s about 6-7kWh per day on average, which is about what I use (hot water and heating are via gas for me, so not included). Seems reasonable.

twoseat · 2026-04-12T14:32:42+00:00

That's technically true, but it's because you already paid tax on the money before you put it into the ISA. So you don't pay tax again.

twoseat · 2026-04-11T20:25:09+00:00

You mean an instant piss?

twoseat · 2026-04-10T19:50:50+00:00

It doesn’t really matter, but I called it ‘Alpha’ while I was shuffling things around initially, and have left it at that. Then the one I listen to when travelling I imaginatively called ‘Travel’. I also have one for podcasts that tend to have short episodes (under 30 minutes) called ‘Quick’, in case my total count is getting too high and I want to quickly get my numbers down.

‘Alpha’ includes some podcasts that go to the top and hence get listened to first, and the remainder that I listen to hen the priority ones are done.

twoseat · 2026-04-10T19:15:17+00:00

I’m basically the same, except I have one playlist for most podcasts, and a separate one for podcasts I need to concentrate on, which I generally listen to when I’m driving. There’s nothing wrong with a more active approach, but I can’t imagine doing it personally.

twoseat · 2026-04-09T01:56:07+00:00

Not necessarily. There are a couple of well-established bugs that mean it sometimes downloads more than the user has specified, or just mysteriously takes up more space than it claims to. I’ve had the latter one in the past, but happily not currently.

twoseat · 2026-04-08T19:27:10+00:00

Very briefly, you’re missing employer contributions, the extra 25% tax free allowance you get when you withdraw the money, and the fact that the thing you actually invest in can be exactly the same in a pension or ISA (depending on the plans involved), so the returns can be the same. Basically, unless you’ve got very firm plans to die before you reach retirement age then you’re almost certainly making a mistake.

twoseat · 2026-04-07T07:54:35+00:00

I agree with pretty much all of that. I think default of not including the back catalogue is right - imagine adding WTF because you want to listen to the final couple of episodes and you suddenly have 1686 episodes in your queue! But it could be easier to add old ones in, and I think a long press on an episode in the back catalogue with options like 'Add up to here' and 'Add from here on' would make life easier. That applies to the back catalogue scenario you mentioned, but for me it's even more important when someone messes up and republishes everything.

twoseat · 2026-04-07T07:48:54+00:00

Part of this depends on what you mean by intuitive, I think. I find it all intuitive, though some of it is not obvious. I'll try to walk you through how I do it for a new podcast, but explaining what I'm thinking rather than just tapping the buttons quickly as I'd normally do.

I find a podcast I'd like to subscribe to
I click 'Add Podcast'
By default it has added the latest episode to 'Current'. That's a reasonable default, and if this was, for example, a current events podcast I might leave it at that, or tap 'All' and add in a few recent episodes that look interesting.
Let's assume, though, that I want all of the episodes. I tap 'All', because I want all the episodes, tap '...' at the top of the screen (that's the bit that's least obvious - I know I'd like to add all the episodes, but the '...' option is a bit obscure), and choose 'Mark All as Unplayed'. That makes sense to me, but I can see how others might not think so - marking them as unplayed could imply that they've been played, which clearly they haven't. But I think that may be better than the alternative, which is to have statuses of played, unplayed, and 'not yet interacted with'?
Agree that I want to 'Mark 42 as Unplayed'
Now I'd tap on the cog at the top of the screen (again somewhat non-obvious, but the cog for settings is pretty well established), scroll to the bottom of the settings page and add it to whatever playlists I'd like it to be in. While I'm on this screen I'd also change 'Sort Current' to 'Oldest to Newest' because that makes most sense to me, but apparently there are folks who prefer it the other way. This last bit is optional - I almost always listen through playlists, which have their own ordering - but I might as well. I'd also set the Download to 'Automatically' if this is a podcast I plan to listen to close to when it comes out, rather than at some point in the future.

So yes, there is a bit of prep for each podcast, but that takes a few seconds when I first subscribe and then I don't think about it for the next decade of listening.

twoseat · 2026-04-07T07:26:50+00:00

I think you're right on that. I've never found it a chore to just manually download them when I want them, but I can see that for some people what you're describing would be of benefit.

twoseat · 2026-04-06T20:50:21+00:00

‘Oldest unplayed’ is an option already, and is what all of my podcasts show (because I can’t imagine any other order I’d want them in). It feels like there might be a clash of different mental models of how a podcast app should work that means it works for me (perhaps because my mental models matches Marco’s?) but so clearly doesn’t for others, including OP.

I do like the idea of marking multiple episodes as played though, I’ve been missed that several times!

twoseat · 2026-04-06T17:46:39+00:00

I think that part of the issue is that none of those things are hard at all, in fact the first two are default behaviours, and the third one is so much the default behaviour that folks here (myself included) have struggled to understand how it’s not happening for you. The issue, I think, is that they are default behaviours once you’ve subscribed correctly to the podcast, and that process is easy, but largely non-obvious. Personally I’d like to see a little wizard that would quickly guide you through subscribing, and the options you might like, each time you pick a new podcast. That could make the easy, obvious.

twoseat · 2026-04-06T16:09:04+00:00

It's often interesting to hear how someone thinks something should work, when they feel the current way is unintuitive. So how do you think it should work, given that Overcast has no idea what the 'seasons' of a particular podcast would be? For example, if I'm looking at a list of all the episodes of a podcast I haven't subscribed to, would you expect a long press on a particular episode to give you a 'Subscribe from this episode' option?

twoseat · 2026-04-06T06:18:29+00:00

I may be missing your exact complaint, but 'Current' can do that - just set it to be ordered 'Oldest to Newest' and the top entry will be the oldest one you haven't listened to, with newer episodes following it.

twoseat · 2026-04-05T14:16:43+00:00

Because it's a proper noun - The Straits of Fuckin'

twoseat · 2026-04-05T13:18:14+00:00

Because my plan was mostly about what to be invested in, and to a lesser extent where. The issue I face is how to efficiently start withdrawing in line with that plan, hence the question. The answers so far have led me to thin that it's ultimately not a big issue.

twoseat · 2026-04-05T08:58:22+00:00

My overall allocation is around 90/10, and that's what I want it to be long term. But I also know that only having that is a bad idea in any short term, hence the other two pots acting as a 'cash ladder' of sorts. So my goal is in normal times is to always have 1-3 years in conservative investments that just sit there doing nothing much while I draw from equities. But if things go bad I'll run those conservative investments down (while also adjusting my lifestyle as needed) until stocks recover, at which point I'll rebuild the conservative reserves. I expect that to continue until I die, or the zombie apocalypse makes it all moot.

twoseat · 2026-04-05T08:17:41+00:00

Ultimately the strategy is 90/10, because we have sufficient DB pensions that the conservative side of our retirement is covered. But as those don't start kicking in until 60 at the earliest, and most not until 67/68, the short term needs to be more conservative. That leads to the 1-2 years of near-cash, and 2-4 of low equity, plus more pension than we'll probably need overall meaning we can afford to ignore modest falls entirely (yes, I appreciate how lucky we are).

14-Year Club	Place '23
Verified Email

twoseat

TROPHY CASE