Quite literally bumped into Jacob Rees-Mogg in Chelsea. He looked terrified without his nanny around.

Got an older brother. We were very close growing up, sharing hobbies and friends, and it’s been our foundation for keeping in touch since then. We don’t see each other as often as I would like, but I would say our relationship remains strong. We’ve both kept in touch with the same group of friends. “Life”, however, has imposed on us both; we live in different countries, both with family (mine is large, his is small but his lovely son unfortunately has a set of issues) so finding time to both talk and meet is very, very difficult. I’m definitely the one keeping in touch (can’t remember the last time he called me, other than a few times where he needs IT support) but that’s understandable given what’s going ok with his son.

I’ve really tried but I’m still failing to understand your comment. You seem to be saying that if what I said was true, private water companies wouldn’t exist, due to the fact that people aren’t stupid. But we are ruled by people who steal and the IMF forces poor countries to private water processing.

Ok, so I get each individual word, but both as sentences and a paragraph I am either to thick to understand what you are saying or your explanation doesn’t make any sense.

If you try to to word it to me like I’m a dumb 4-year old I think we would have a better foundation for debate.

The best sense I can make of your statements is something along these lines: I (me, the author of this here comment) am dumb, because what I’ve described sounds sensible, but the real world is not sensible, and we can see evidence for that because private water companies exist. And they exist because our rulers steal from us.

Have I gotten close? Is that actually what you’re saying?

(If you have patience to reword things for me, please bear in mind that I do not live in the US, as you do, so my context is different to an American context).

I mean you can collect rain water (or build your own bore hole), process it, treat it for storage, keep it, test it to verify that it’s still safe to drink, install and maintain a pumping system to provide pressure, provide adequate documentation and inspection opportunities, provide a traceable record of where it has come from, install a water water treatment system, provide the necessary permits to verify that you’re not draining polluted water into the ocean etc etc…

But I guess if you want someone else to do that for you, some salaries, know how and materials will need to get paid for, yes.

Flying back from China 4-5 months ago. Checked in at the airport. Turned out you needed a COVID test to come back into the U.K. So I missed the flight. That sucked but then I had to try getting a rapid COVID test in the middle of the night; ended up at a public Chinese hospital where no one spoke English. Fucking nightmare.

Houses are built differently in hot areas. Very few windows facing south. Shutters on all windows. All windows deeply recessed. Channel the wind, ie have a deep through channel that spans across the house so any pressure differential causes air to exchange. Tiled floors. No/low insulation.

In Northern Europe, we live in sweat boxes designed for letting in maximum light and keeping heat inside the house.

Totally. Blows my mind that people can’t seem to understand that if it’s hotter outside than inside, the inside won’t get any cooler by opening windows.

Last summer in London (42 C!!) we became a box of shadows during the day. Keep the cool inside.

Definitely reading it and thanks for the recommendation.

Sonarr at the ready!!!

Great links and recommendations.

I have not read Peter Zeihans’ book, but going only by the blurb, I do take issues with the notion that global supply chains are only working because of the US Navy. That seems a wholeheartedly American view - as if China, or India, or the EU wouldn’t be able to trade unless the US Navy existed. If the point is one about piracy, then I certainly believe the fight against it, where it occurs, is deeply multinational and not dominated by the US Navy. Will have to read the book to understand his point, I think.

I’m going to try to keep the SpaceBaby’s name out of this, but I am genuinely excited for the step change the next generation of lift vehicles will bring to space exploration.

I’ve become thoroughly depressed with how we are mishandling our own planet, and I know there are huge risks in believing that finding new places to fuck up will solve anything (also, it’s a pipe dream - terraforming isn’t something we could really hope to achieve and anything outside our solar system is just too far away) … but, dammit, my 12-year old self dreamed of spaceships refuelling in orbit, resupplying permanent missions on other planets/moons, and now it might actually happen.

I feel really happy for you! I’ve got two older daughters who are both into their performing arts and nothing will reduce me to tears quicker than seeing them blossoming during a performance, doing things that have taken years and years of practice and which I could never hope to achieve.

Second by far. Just felt so hard hitting and Greengrass is a genius.

I bet it felt like Groundhog Day watching that film over and over.

You’ve got to go through a round of redundancies/layoffs to learn this. No amount of telling some freebie-munching programmer will teach them. Source: I was a freebie-munching programmer.

And the acceptance beyond that is “… and that’s ok, it’s not the company’s job to love you, but don’t for a second be fooled into loyalty”.

Supposing we could somehow bring the light into the body?! Or maybe we could inject them with disinfectant! We better look into that.

My local pub is older than the USA.

I only download Linux distributions over a anonymised VPN that exits in Switzerland.

We really went minimal after our fourth kid. Too many toys, too much of everything. We don’t need 3 whisks, or 4 blankets, or 6 duvet covers, or 4 spatulas.

We now have a fairly minimalist house, with the exception toys, but here we do weekly rotation, leaving most of it boxed up in the garage and only some out. They kids think they get new toys when some of their old stuff reappears.

Yes it is. But that doesn’t mean we should congeal onto one. Instead I’d strongly prefer clients being able to merge multiple communities into one feed. That way, if a node “drops” (defederated, closes, technical issue etc) the congealation (I’d like that to be the word, please) would still survive.

Discovery services could then be built around popular congealations.