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  Everyone else on here is too old to remember kid's TV programme Watt on Earth. As a kid it felt very off and made me uncomfortable. It was about a shape-shifting alien stranded on Earth. But the alien was effectively an adult man who turned up at a boy's house, stopped the boy from telling any adults about him, and then lived in the boy's bedroom. That setup was a dodgy thing to teach.

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  Putting Jeri Ryan as six of nine?

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  Today's spam emails can't decide (between them) if I'm too hot or too cold. Presumably spreading their geographic bets.

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  When a publication (e.g. Bylines) starts with a deceptive design pattern like this, how can trust be built in their writing? Making "Reject" almost imperceptible means I can't trust your "Accept all" is as harmless and that you genuinely think PRIVACY MATTERS. Also, you can _count_ readers without all the cookies.

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  I'm struggling to have any motivation in life at the moment. Everything feels like a vast effort.

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  All UK electricity companies I've ever used are dodgy with their billing. They have _always_ over-estimated my usage which they always use as an excuse to over-charge me in advance. They constantly put up my direct debits to get increasing interest-free loans from me. They almost always use the excuse that energy use can vary across a year (obvs) so they need to build up a large stockpile of credit. That excuse sounds most plausible at this time of the year but I've had it in spr...

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  Yesterday's Loconundrum was very pleasing. Loconundrum #225 ⬜⬜🟨 🚂🚂🚂🚂 🟩🟩🟩

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  If anyone has any accessibility issues with https://hex.constituencies.org.uk/ please let me know. I* have tried to make sure all the hex maps are keyboard navigable with tooltips that should work with screenreaders. *with help from people like @gilesdring and @christianp over the years

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  I've been dipping into this continuing thread on and off https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/117324790823856750 I feel I should have had some 🍿 to hand.

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  Every single electricity company I've used has billing that deliberately makes it hard to easily compare periods of time. They must have people inventing ways to make it more confusing.

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  I get bothered about standing charges on electricity bills. Because they act in two ways that are counter to what we should be doing. Firstly they've basically doubled compared to gas since 2022. This discourages the switch from gas to electricity. Secondly, because they add a floor to how much you get charged, they discourage people from lowering electricity use. Gas put the costs of network operation onto unit prices but electricity puts it on the standing charge. These are choices.

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  Leeds folk, Leeds Stand Up To Racism are having an event to make the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Holbeck Moor.

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  In the 1930s the Blackshirts were defeated at the Battle of Holbeck Moor in Leeds (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Holbeck_Moor) then again, a week later, at the battle of Cable Street in London (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cable_Street).

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  Does the average centi-billionaire (where 1b is 1000m) employ a thousand times more people than the average centi-millionaire?

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  I once played a very brief game of cricket in the Lovell Telescope (after a resurface but before it got properly tuned) because we wanted to recreate a scene from The Dish. We used a tennis ball to avoid damage. The Chief Engineer was wicket keeper. I'm bowling.

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  The exact amount to tax the wealth of the super rich, and the level of wealth it should kick in at, matters less right now than doing *something*. Endless arguments about it being 1% , 2% or 5% etc or start above £10m, £100m, or £1b etc just act to stop any wealth tax from happening. And that works to keep the richest gaining an ever larger share of everything.

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  The estate agent contacted me to tell me I hadn't paid my rent. Except I had. The amount they were after was an odd amount. It turns out they've increased my rent by 6.7% but I hadn't received any notice warning me about that. Hmm. :(

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  We all know Reform UK is an _English_ Imperialist company so follows long traditions of subjugation. Yes they'd want to destroy many of the languages of these islands (I'm surprised they will supposedly allow Welsh) but this was most likely a direct response to leaflets being made available in Urdu and Bangla recently. https://bylinetimes.com/2026/07/13/reform-uk-plans-to-jail-candidates-for-using-irish-gaelic-or-cornish-on-election-leaflets/ We should be standing in solidarity with the...

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  We have eyelids but we don't have earlids.

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  #SilentSunday #Scotland

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  When I see something like https://thenoisyroom.com/ I immediately start thinking about the problems. It seems very much from the perspective of there bring *one* public. That a "national poll" applies across many different countries. In all likelihood most of the world would be presented with US polls as what is "normal". Then there's the big owned platforms inevitably skewing the presented numbers for their owner's wishes. We can't jus...

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  A lazy Wednesday afternoon resting

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  In 2018 Theresa May promised to bring in a ban on LGBT "conversion therapy" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58683038 In 2020 Boris Johnson also said plans would be "brought forward" but then opened a public consultation instead. Liz Truss had no time to deliver on a previous promise. In 2023 Rishi Sunak was going to bring in a draft bill https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/sunak-conversion-therapy-gay-trans-b2432375.html By 2025, Keir Starmer&...

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  I often get a bit frustrated when the UK publishes statistics that compare the nations of the UK where an "England" figure (England having roughly 10 times more people than Scotland) hides the systemic geographic disparities within "England".

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  Work blog post: Our archive of Bus Open Data https://open-innovations.org/blog/2026-04-30-our-archive-of-bus-data Where I suggest that somebody could take it on.

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  The York "zero post"

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  Someone in my community has asked me if I'd make an A4 poster for World Bee Day on 20th May. I started looking up information about bees and I found this Friends of the Earth bee identification guide: https://friendsoftheearth.uk/nature/bee-identification-guide The question is, why didn't they call it "Bee or not a bee?"?

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  This is one of the fish and chip restaurants near me. It was the original Harry Ramsdens (before they became a big, not great, chain). This resturant once described itself as the largest fish and chip shop in the world. It is now the Wetherby Whaler but still retains the grand, over-the-top, chandeliers. There is also a man who plays piano versions of hits of the day whilst you eat your chip butties.

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  RE: https://front-end.social/@benschwarz/116445796505977800 The hexes drew me to this post. Obviously. Then I spotted our Leeds wards hex map in the "Research and inspiration" section. I was a little surprised by the 10kB but then realised that was gzipped and that made more sense. I'm glad others are seeing that pre-rendered SVG for hex maps is good for multiple reasons.

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  Will an "open" project finally be allowed to be open today? 🤞