Same went for their rivals, Poundworld and 99p Stores, both of which have already long since bitten the dust.

Meanwhile their rivals that don’t bother with the fixed price gimmick (B&M, Home Bargains, Poundstretcher) seem to be doing better.

Poundland is never as cheap as you think it will be, anyway, even when they do stick to under £1. They just sell smaller packages of products than other shops; it’s not like they’re selling anything at a loss.

Tunnocks tea cakes are ordinary biscuits with an extraordinary amount of marshmallow.

In theory it really shouldn’t matter. You choose your instance, and it’s up to the instance admins to make decisions about backend software choices. It’s possible that we’ll get to a place there it’s possible for admins to migrate a server from Lemmy to Piefed or back again without loss of content, in which case all the user would see about it would be a change of default interface.

I’m on Feddit.uk, which has several different web interfaces to choose from, and I mostly browse using a mobile app (Boost). It really makes basically no difference to me whether it’s running Lemmy or Piefed.

A social network needs enough users to actually function. In the early days, Lemmy/kbin/associates were too quiet to be appealing, so there was a constant push to bring in new users. As this is a Reddit clone social network, inevitably that means hoping that Reddit users will come across.

I would argue that Lemmy et al is already at a high enough number of active users that there’s a basic critical mass; that there’s enough activity here such that a new user would find plenty to keep them engaged. It could certainly stand to be much bigger still, but the pressure to grow is much less intense.

Exactly! Tunnel capacity is a hard upper limit, but in an ideal world you’d be using every minute of that capacity for either passengers or freight. Depot capacity issues are very solvable.

Station capacity is also an issue (particularly passport control issues at St Pancras, which limits how many passengers they can process even beyond platform capacity), but that’s relatively solvable too. One of the competing proposals (possibly the Gemini one?) wanted to make Stratford International its terminus rather than St Pancras to avoid station congestion. If HS1-HS2 link were back in play, that would open up other options for alternative termini too (such as Old Oak Common, or HS2 stations out of London).

Yep. It’s to distinguish it from other forms of homelessness, such as “sofa surfing” (where someone moves from one friend or family member to another for short periods without having a fixed address of their own), people temporarily living in homeless shelters/boarding houses, people living in places which aren’t really accommodation (such as their place of work), and “statutory homelessness” (a broader legal definition which includes a few things which might not seem like homelessness, such as people who are at serious risk of violence in their homes).

Personally I am decidedly unoptimistic about their chances on this one, as it seems to be looking for a huge amount of spending for some very small communities (e.g., a new mainline station at Christian Malford, population somewhat less than 1000 people). But you’ve got to love the effort.

With the number of different proposals now in flight (at least 5 that I’m aware of, including this one), surely we must be heading towards the conclusion that we need to build new depots. If unmet demand for international rail travel is there and the only limiting factor is capacity at Temple Mills, surely the answer has to be increasing capacity to meet the demand rather than just accepting that some company will be allowed a few scraps.

In your own home, couldn’t you just use internet radio instead?

I mostly listen to BBC radio, and I default to listening over BBC Sounds rather than DAB when I’ve got a WiFi connection. I mostly only use DAB when I’m in the car or out in the garden.

I must have missed the golden age. Taco Bell opened in my town in 2021, and I’ve only eaten in there a couple of times because it’s dire. Small, scraggly little wraps with barely any filling (and the filling they do have is bland and crap; they don’t seem to sell a single spicy item on the menu).

We’re not exactly overwhelmed with Mexican restaurants, but even if I wanted a taco I still wouldn’t bother.

Do you think it might be a good idea to bolster the admin team by another member, just in case?

I’m not volunteering, you understand. Oh heck no. But might be worth putting the feelers out to see if anyone is interested. If Emperor returns then all good, you’ve got an extra admin, no harm done; and if he doesn’t, then at least you’re not short-handed.

They’re cakes, as ruled on by the courts in the case of McVities Biscuits vs HM Revenue and Customs (1991).

Agreed; I don’t hate my FP4, but it’s definitely the least polished phone I’ve ever owned, and it wasn’t cheap for it. The ghosting was a nightmare, but they fixed it (eventually) with a software update…which begs the question why it shipped with a bug like that in the first place.

The company has been around far too long to get away with putting out buggy devices.

And that’s before we get to the failure to update FP4 (let alone FP3+) to Android 14, despite being well within their support period. In theory FP4 will be going straight to Android 15, but FP3+ is effectively grounded at Android 13; which considering their stated goal of reducing e-waste, is really not a good look.

And yet nobody ever wants my tiramisu.

The real competitor for green aviation isn’t hydrogen, it’s bio-fuel. Bio-kerosene, bio-gas and bio-ethanol all have useful roles in aviation, and are essentially carbon neutral over their lifecycle. Zero carbon at the proverbial tailpipe is a lot less important when that tailpipe is at 30,000 feet.

What I’m learning from this article is that Mr Polanski has no idea what the word “populism” means.

It’s less a “row” and more a straightforward capacity issue.

The ORR has produced a report detailing exactly how much capacity is available at Temple Mills, and the long and short of it is “some, not a lot”. If an operator puts in a bid which only requires a small amount of depot space then in theory that could sneak in there and use that capacity, but basically all the serious proposals we’ve heard about so far (Virgin, FS Italiane, Evolyn and Gemini) are likely to be too big and need further depot investment. This isn’t news to Virgin; they’ve read the same report everyone else has. They just need to figure out what they want to do about it.

Recipe notes:

Romaine lettuce is what I had so it’s what’s in it. I cannot personally vouch for the results with other lettuce varieties, but I can’t see it working especially badly with any variety. Your mileage may vary.

I’ve said “tinned mushrooms” because it’s what I had and used and this is an honest recipe, but obviously use fresh mushrooms if you prefer.

Maggi liquid seasoning is a solid staple for South Asian cooking; it’s made from wheat, but it’s functionally just a vehicle for tasty, tasty MSG. I’m told there are other brands, but Maggi is the one you tend to see in supermarket World Food aisles. If you don’t have it, soy sauce (especially the dark variety) is a decent substitute.

A lot of quality small local newspapers doing an amazing job are financially struggling. It’s very sad.

Sadly not as many as you’d think. The overwhelming majority of local newspapers were owned by a handful of national companies. The three biggest are Reach (owner of the Mirror and the Express, amongst others), Newsquest and National World, who between them own 70% of all local papers. Another 10% are owned by the next biggest company (Tindle News). Only at most 20% of local papers are owned by smaller companies, and most of those aren’t independent, they’re just smaller companies than the big 4.

Anyone lucky enough to still have a genuine independent local paper with at least passable quality should cherish the fuck out of it.

ReactOS is a very fun project, but anyone expecting it to be a real useable OS is absolutely mad. It’s been going for almost 30 years, and they’re almost at the point of binary compatibility with Windows Server 2003…