It’s not like the UK lags behind the rich world in terms of social housing, we have some of the highest proportions of it. So I think it’s fair to try to understand why we appear to be so much more in need of it than anyone else. Maybe we should be trying to solve the problem in other ways as well.

Fairly close to me, I’m always amused to see that Barton’s Belt is not even close to going all the way around Six Mile Bottom.

By comparison the UK police shot to death 30 people in a decade. Normalising by population, that would be about 15 people a year in the entire US. Despite the nonsense in some right-wing media, the UK is certainly no more lawless than the US. www.policeconduct.gov.uk/sites/defaul...

Oh, and I am aware of this study, but again it’s two years old. But it shows incidents per million miles five times higher for human drivers than autonomous. It’s measuring injuries not fatalities, but it’s close enough, I think. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39485678/?ut...

Define “central”. The average price for a semi-detached house across London is £716K. If you mean you want to live in zone 1, that’s going to be a luxury that many people can’t afford, just as with more of less any major city anywhere in the developed world. www.gov.uk/government/n...

What kind of twisted scumbag throws things at wild animals?!

Are you sure a crane meaty enough to lift a train will fold down low enough to be below the wires even on a flatcar? I’m honestly not convinced. I struggled to find representative images, but this one was about the closest. Looks significantly taller than a passenger train to me.

Last week’s Economist had some discussion of how drawing down reserves is a significant part of depressing oil price rises, along with higher than expected reductions in demand. But of course reserves can only last so long. economist.com/finance-and-...

Very well put! I also find it much easier to think with a pen and paper in front of me, but what gets scribbled is usually totally unrelated (example below). My take is that part of my brain is a noisy child that needs to be given a toy to occupy it while the grownup part gets on with things.

In a messy world, doodling tidy shapes can be quite therapeutic.

Come on Tom, I think you know as well as I do that it’s highly unlikely that everyone draws a squirrel-themed map of the area when they move into a new house! For example, mine is duck-themed, and there’s a lot of other wildlife that other people choose.

The Ancestry app tells me I should dislike cilantro – I would classify it as a mild dislike, not intense aversion. But then I click through and it says it’s “at least 6%” genetic. Which is not a great level of confidence! Even if it is largely genetic, I guess there may be epigenetic factors, too.

“Overly optimistic” is working hard there. I wonder how long before the US government considers an export ban, to protect domestic supply? I think we’d see prices start moving pretty fast at that point.

The only remarkable thing about this story to me is that the UK is still relevant enough to be worth spying on. apple.news/ANZhyjySCQ2G...

This sort of statement is ludicrous beyond words. Saying that there is “no route” to renewal that doesn’t go via AI is equivalent to saying the UK was utterly doomed before AI existed. Maybe AI is useful, maybe it isn’t, but I’m quite certain there have always been paths to improvement without it.

Although at least Misty had the sense to cool off in the water feature at the nearby dog walking field to us when we were there on Monday. Our other dog, Ben, refused to enter it until we turned the water off – then he gingerly plopped his belly down in the puddle that was left. He’s such a wuss.

Pick a Bond villain from the pictures you already have on your phone.

It’s certainly a good summary of why so many people are puzzled by the negative sentiment. But it’s a little frustrating in that I feel it has a large part of its answer in it – living standards don’t match expectations – but then downplays it and says, “that’s not enough to explain it!” (1/9)

I believe tipping used to be heavily frowned upon in the US, until they imported it from Europe. I assume it’s only the fact the European countries have typically then developed stronger labour laws which makes tips less essential than in the US. www.nationalgeographic.com/history/arti...

From a road near me where average speed cameras (which can only work with ANPR) were installed a couple of decades ago, deaths and serious injuries dropped 68% after the cameras were installed. I drive it regularly and you see very few people speeding there now. www.pistonheads.com/news/general...

There was a production issue impacting service for a customer, and support took an hour just to get engaged? That’s honestly terrible. If my team has a customer blocking issue, in less time we’d have not just support reps, but if necessary engineering logged in and fixing the issue 24/7/365.

John Ousterhout calls these people “tactical tornadoes”, in his (excellent!) book “A Philosophy of Software Design”.

I wanted to check if I was thinking of the right one, so I searched and found the article below… But IIRC correctly it’s illustrated with a picture from the 1988 novel Spellfire – which I think it’s not only the wrong dracolich, but also the wrong setting. www.worldanvil.com/w/greyhawk-d...

And this was with a turnout of nearly 60%. Even if disaffected Labour voters don’t switch votes to another candidate, but instead just don’t vote, a lower turnout could easily erase this majority. members.parliament.uk/member/4504/...

Unless it’s completely undeclared (who knows!) then he hasn’t donated anything like this much to Reform under any other names, simply because he’s far and away their biggest donor. donation.watch/en/unitedkin...

NGL, however, I wish my car seats genuinely did swivel sideways like this.

I mean, to be fair, I’ve lost my keys a few times – but this seems very careless indeed on the part of Keir Starmer.