dougclow.bsky.social
I help people understand things and change them, with data. Views here my own.
"I can't quite work out whether you're a tremendously silly man, a tremendously serious man or, as I suspect, a rather unholy combination of both."
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Yes! I support your campaign and will vote for you as Emperor!
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Glass is usually microwave-transparent. (You can add stuff to it that makes it very much not so.) But you also need thermal stability: glass can shatter with uneven heat, e.g. from superhot cheese. Again, thermal stability = more expensive. But it's the best choice: microwave platters are glass.
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Plastics are even more complex, and I'm kind of down on microwaving in/on plastics at all for leaching plasticisers and microplastics into the food/drink, but again at a top level microwave-transparency & heat stability is another materials requirement to trade off, so is generally more expensive.
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It's expensive, is the issue. It's quite complex with lots of factors but, basically, the hotter you fire ceramics, the less porous/more completely vitrified they are, and the less they tend to absorb microwaves. And hotter firing = more energy = more cost.
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A million penny chews!
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I’d extend your footnote to say it’s also different in Surrey, Sussex, and Kent, but otherwise seems legit.
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I wouldn’t worry about mouldiness from an air cooler in our climate. It’s not hot enough to run it most of the time, and we don’t tend that humid generally. But an AC unit will help a bit more with the occasional muggiest, humid nights.
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If you’re already doing all you can with curtains and windows, fans can absolutely make a huge difference. They don’t cool the room down - in fact they heat it slightly, so don’t leave them running when they are not pointed at anyone - but they cool people by increasing evaporation off the skin.
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Yeah AIUI the services are mandated to introduce it from 25 July, and none of them are going to want to be first.
This is free-to-use services, in the main, mostly ad-supported or freemium. As you say, the paid-for stuff could easily insist on a credit card to prove age.
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Very interested if you can dig out a cite. It does sound depressingly/entertainingly plausible. But online sources I can find easily seem to dispute it, eg factly.in/the-statemen... and www.linkedin.com/pulse/false-...
Although neither of those are super top-quality.
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Oh this is brilliant, thank you!
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If/when they introduce identity verification to adult sites I expect a lot of visitors will stop coming.
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OTOH those could both be plausibly classified elsewhere (eg computer and information services or entertainment). I refuse to gaze long in to the abyss that is the details of trade statistics lest I develop expertise. I admire those who have it but from what I see their life is not for me.
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Fenix International Limited is classified as “93290 - Other amusement and recreation activities not elsewhere classified“ at Companies House so maybe? If bet365 is also Other Services I think the claim of an Old Rectory Mittelstand would seem busted.
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Wait a minute - what would OnlyFans be classified as in the trade figures? If it’s “Other business and professional services” I’d guess it’s big enough to account for the outlier on its own - site volume $6.6bn in 2023, business revenue $1.3bn.
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Yeah, there are much better-value options if the services you’re offering are smiled on by payment processors. Many calendaring services offer payments integration, for instance, but of course explicitly exclude porn in the T&Cs.
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I was considering that platform just the other day as a way of providing paid premium professional consulting services with minimal overhead in terms of invoicing.
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Yeah think you’re right. I was implicitly assuming people follow tech policy a lot more closely than they in fact do, which is almost certainly not at all.
I suspect the government may be taken aback by the size of the, uh, blowback.
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Ok that is a useful data point, ta - if you didn’t know then that’s a good sign most people have absolutely no idea.
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Further question from guest panellist: Were you really convicted for covering the road with potatoes and silt?
“Technically no. The offence was polluting inland waters. But I did have to pay a grand compensation to someone who was seriously inconvenienced by me blocking the road with mud and spuds.”
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Yes! Lee Mack asks if he planted the potatoes up and down the slope, or if he was wise and planted along the slope to reduce the risk of soil erosion and run off.
“Oh, up and down, which is why pretty much the whole field slid off and into the river when it rained.”
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Interested to know if you find anything. In many ways Onlyfans is an obvious option, and in some important ways obviously not.
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Do we know for sure that David Mitchell the comedian does not do a bit of irresponsible potato farming in Taunton as a side hustle?
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When I was at school I did read an entire three-volume print encyclopaedia, sticking my fingers in to keep track of interesting cross-references the way you do now with browser tabs.
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That is cheery! Looks like Douglas tartan to me. My background is Scottish and I am a Douglas, but not that sort of Douglas. (My clan's Menzies.) No idea about the Clan Douglas connection - the village of Douglas is a fair way away in South Lanarkshire, and Castle Douglas further still.
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This story gives so much. I misread it as threats *by* inflatable crocodiles. “Inflatable crocodile protest” is now a high-probability triple in AI training data. And previous related news stories include an RNLI rescue and one in Plymouth which was mistaken for a genuine croc, prompting alarm.
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Mmm I think it is potentially misleading to say External Examiners are almost unremunerated. Agree the honorarium is usually small but almost all have a salaried position at another university, and don’t generally have to take holiday from it to do that work.
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Bees!
Got her! Not easy as you say - the mark looks like an ordinary thorax glinting in the sun - but the size of the abdomen gives her away once you’ve found her.
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Hard water sucks. Too much detergent and/or fabric conditioner can make things worse not better. You can get limescale prevention tablets that you add with each cycle, which essentially act as a water softener, which do help.
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I’m excited to have just booked tickets to a VR recreation of a historical event at the Barbican. The historical event it’s simulating? A rave.
Same feeling I have visiting the National Computing Museum & seeing computers I used, & seeing stuff I remember happening on the GCSE history curriculum.
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I was going to joke that some latitude is available to the artist and maybe the interloping book has been soaked in a solution of lithium-6, but then I noticed that the third quarter of the new brand has lithium-6 not lithium-7 which is infuriating.
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Yeah, not the best arms in the world in the first place, but the new design is not even arguably following the blazon, is it? I understand the Court of Chivalry has jurisdiction in such matters, although SFAIK it's not heard a case since the 1950s, and not obvious to me who'd have locus standi.
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Hold on, I was forgetting the huge good ONS news recently- that census 2031 will be a proper census, not an estimate based on administrative data. That’s two positive data points in a row! Too soon to call an inflection point in the ONS’s fortunes but let’s hope it is.
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I'm so relieved!
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Some people really know how to have a good time! And when things are … like this, you have to look for joy in perhaps unexpected places. Hooray for Governance, Compliance and Legal Services! What fun it will be.