Ben Taylor @VoxDei@qoto.org

@JamesBoag Only if they've run out of thyme to pay. Hopefully they go and get some sage advice first.

Interesting different press takes on the British passenger in this missing submersible. To the BBC, Hamish Harding is a "British Adventurer". To the Guardian, he is a "UK Billionaire". Interestingly, on this one the Daily Mail has gone with the same line as the Guardian - he's a billionaire.

Presumably both are true(ish). One is designed to make you feel some sympathy with him, one is designed to make you think it serves him right.

#submersible #titanic #ukpress #theguardian #bbc #dailymail

"Liz Truss says lettuce joke was ‘puerile’ and media did not understand her ideas"

I'm not sure that Liz Truss understood Liz Truss' ideas. I'm also not sure she understands the word "puerile".

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/19/liz-truss-lettuce-joke-puerile-media

#liztruss #ukpolitics

@jikodesu Various North of England (Geordie, for example) or Glaswegian. Though South-West England can be pretty incomprehensible as well if it's done right.

@trinsec Yeah. I know it's not just Devon, but the likes of Thames Water (who as far as I'm aware are worse) aren't billing me. ;-)

I was thinking about it more after I posted that. And actually I don't think it's about saving water at all. Because the argument being made is essentially "Water is of concern to all of us, saving it is everyone's responsibility", however unrealistic it may be to expect voluntary large-scale changes in consumer behaviour. And the thing about *that* is, if it's everyone's responsibility, then it isn't South West Water's. It lets them off the hook, they can sit back, throw a few pennies at the problem (while paying off their shareholders) and declare they've done their bit.

No. You haven't done your bit, and it isn't everyone's responsibility. It is yours. Go fix it.

I live in Devon. I am under a hosepipe ban. My supplier (South West Water) is very kindly suggesting some "easy wins" for me to save water, like taking less time in the shower, or using my washing machine less. It reckons that this way my household could save 12 litres per person per day, for a total of 48 litres saved per day, or about 18,000 litres per year. Sounds like a lot, right?

Yeah. The thing is, South West Water (in common with the other privatised water companies) lost 90 *million* litres *per day* in leaks in the last year for which data are available (https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/publication/leakage-dataset-march-2023/). And even that is likely a significant under-estimate, because it's under investigation by the regulator on suspicion of mis-reporting its leak figures. It has also paid out £112M in dividends to shareholders this week, while kindly putting my bills up, so sorry, we need money for investment to stop dumping all this sewage we're dumping. Illegally.

My little 48 litres is a literal drop in the ocean. Why on Earth would I put myself out when it will make not a blind bit of difference to the water available for general use?

In absolute terms, 18kl per year feels like a lot, granted. But the sheer effrontery of coming to me effectively cap in hand while handing out an actual fortune to their shareholders makes me want to just leave all my taps running.

South-West Water: Take the beam out of your own eye. Fix your flood of leaks before you come asking me to inconvenience myself to save (relatively speaking) drops. You've got the money for it, or at least you did before you gave it to your shareholders. Scum.

#uk #water #leaks #ukwater #devon #hosepipeban #southwestwater #nationaliseukwater

@FictioJuris @cstross I think my favourite (other than the Atrocity Archives) were the Eschaton books (Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise). Aside from laughing at the spork factory, I've never looked at space combat the same again. When you consider the pace of technological advancement, using something like a star destroyer against a starfaring civilisation is very much bringing a knife to a cruise missile fight.

@shadowspar I accidentally got through Vancouver airport security with one of those not once but twice a while back (like about twenty years ago).

Went through security once, flight was delayed by about 18 hours (turned out the door to the flight deck has three locks, needs one working to fly, all three were broken so they had to fly a new lock from Toronto to Vancouver before the plane could leave) so they bussed us to a hotel for the night.

Went through security again. Only after the flight did I realise the side pocket of my hand luggage contained my Swiss army knife in amongst a bunch of loose AA batteries, which evidently it looked a lot like on the scanner.

Guessing it wouldn't work these days though.

@GeePawHill The best name I've seen for them is SALAMI: https://blog.quintarelli.it/2019/11/lets-forget-the-term-ai-lets-call-them-systematic-approaches-to-learning-algorithms-and-machine-inferences-salami/. The answer to the "Is this SALAMI intelligent?" question becomes immediately obvious.

@dungeon_guide @dungeons

What was 2/2?

Also, is hitting ourselves implemented?

@dungeons Wait, why isn't ranged an option? Our main weapon is a crossbow, and given that that has +4 to hit isn't it a better option here than any of the others?