leicsmac

Would agree with both of these. Guess only time will tell. The one thing I think I could add is that I don't think he can play to the gallery of bigoted prejudice in the same way that Trump can and that might have an effect on the landscape in a few years time.

Appreciate the clarification, and fair enough. It's certainly a problem of complexity.

Certainly not. However, it does reduce the choice to an area 40% the size and with perhaps 25% of the population of the overall UK and even within that area reduces one to a very particular house type. How right that is, is clearly up to the beholder. Possibly so. To clarify, I believe that you're making the argument that getting on the housing ladder is possible for the vast majority of people in the UK with some effort. While I'd tentatively agree with the general statement, it does appear at the moment to come with a lot of restrictions on where and how one can live that are no fault of theirs. Again, how right that may or may not be is clearly up to the beholder.

And for those (roughly) 50% of people who earn below that amount?

I'm finding it hard to pin down Vance tbh. I honestly don't know whether he genuinely buys into the Trump cult of personality, or is more interested in the self interested death-worship that embodies a lot of the Trump base, or whether he's just attached himself to it all as a means to gain personal power. Or a combination of the above. The man is certainly more enigmatic and gives off more mixed signals than his master, that's for sure.

https://phys.org/news/2025-08-rewrite-national-climate.html US President Donald Trump's administration is revising past editions of the nation's premier climate report—its latest move to undermine the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming. The decision, announced by Energy Secretary Chris Wright during a CNN appearance Tuesday night, follows the government's revocation of the Endangerment Finding, a scientific determination that underpins a host of regulations aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Asked by CNN's Kaitlan Collins why previous editions of the National Climate Assessment were no longer available online, former fracking company CEO Wright responded: "Because we're reviewing them, and we will come out with updated reports on those and with comments on those." Fvck around... https://phys.org/news/2025-08-north-atlantic-hurricane-clusters-climate.html Tropical cyclones, commonly known as typhoons or hurricanes, can form in clusters and impact coastal regions back-to-back. For example, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria hit the U.S. sequentially within one month in 2017. The Federal Emergency Management Agency failed to provide adequate support to hurricane victims in Puerto Rico when Maria struck because most rescue resources and specialized disaster staffers were deployed for the responses to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. A new study published in Nature Climate Change confirms these hurricane clusters are becoming more frequent in the North Atlantic in recent decades—a trend projected to continue in the near future. ...and find out.

Yep. If the average (mean, median or mode?) salary in the UK is 38k, that gets you (at a generous 4.5x) roughly 170k. Even if you pair that with a 30k deposit you're still at about 200k, which rules out pretty much anything freehold south of Northampton and even in the Midlands you'll struggle to get much more than a 2-bed terrace in good nick for that.

From what it sounds like, that was a one time unforeseen incident that can be guarded against in future. That doesn't stop the usual suspects from using it as a convenient excuse to bash renewable energy and look to open the door to much worse things in future, though.

Tolkien depicting doomscrolling a century before it got popular. Also, it's wild that Peter Thiel called his company by the same name - Palantir. Either he's wildly ignorant of the context, or he knows it through and through and is just showing off the sociopathy of the service he offers because he feels he can get away with it.

I would like to think that not all of them are, but yes, far too many at least. Carney and Albanese, among others, need to hold their nerve on the matter too. It is so important to have a viable bloc that isn't selling the shitebag nationalist ideals that both the US and Russia are trying to impress upon the world right now.

A lot of sirens in Nuneaton. Possible protest going on?

Jim Lovell, commander of Apollo 13 (among others) and the only man to visit the Moon twice but never set foot on it, aged 97. This one has hit me hard. It is a mark of huge shame on our species that we turned away from the steps he and others made and that he, in the course of his very long life, never got to see "when will we be going back, and who will that be".

Yep. Shocker, right?

Lammy's welcome to JD "Sofa Violator" Vance is...well, pretty horrific in it's sycophancy. Should have stuck to your guns, David. Cowardice wasn't the way here.

I think right now there really needs to be more "let's find cancers that were impossible to find otherwise" and less "what if we make the Dead Internet Theory real and shred the fabric of society through half truths while being as avaricious about it as possible, techbros?" about it all, tbh. There are horrific poisoned excuses for recipes out there that people are cooking because they're being convinced that AI output is reliable.

This series has shown that they can do that, I think. The total amount of runs scored shows that. England just need the bowling to fire so that they're not chasing 350+ to win every Test.

IMO if the England team show up all guns blazing and things go right, it could be 2-2 or 3-2 either way. If not, it will be 3-1 or 4-1 Oz.

There's a few items where you should pay a little extra for quality. Bog roll is definitely one of them.

I'm so glad they appear to have got it right. They really needed to. Looking forward to seeing it myself.

Related: https://www.npr.org/2025/08/04/nx-s1-5453731/nasa-carbon-dioxide-satellite-mission-threatened Unconscionable.

Apparently not, seeing as there still seems to be a statistically significant amount of people willing to run full tilt into that particular fate because they don't consider it worthy of attention. Farmers need protecting in financial and whatever other ways that enable them to continue doing the essential work that they do, that's absolutely true, but if you're not including environmental measures in there, then not too far away nothing else you do for them will matter.

The problem is systemic (as are a few others) and the solution needs to be too.

At this point, I'm also reminded of a quote: "'You get what you deserve'. It's an old saying. One that survived the years, because it's true. For the most part. But not for everyone. Some get more than they deserve. Because they believe they aren't like everyone else. That the rules, the ones people like me and you, the people that work and struggle to live our lives, just live, don't apply to them. That they can do anything and live happily ever after, while the rest of us suffer. They do this from the shadows. Shadows that we cast. With our indifference. With a pervasive lack of interest in anything that doesn't directly affect us, we, in the here and now. Or maybe it's just the shadow of weariness. Of how tired we are, struggling to claw our way back to a middle class that no longer exist, because of those who take more than they deserve. And they keep taking, until all that's left for the rest of us is a memory of how it used to be before the corporations and the bottom line decided we didn't matter anymore. But we do." - Ben Urich

Survivorship bias and thinking personal experience can apply to everyone is a thing, though.

And a lot of this comes back to income equality.