Moore's Law only applies to chips, nothing else. But three decades of ever-cheaper Chinese manufactured goods made it seem inevitable in other fields too.
Simon jests, but the last ~15 years of life in the UK have felt like a constant degradation in the quality of living. I used to enjoy cheap gas to heat my home; now I don’t. I used to be able to drop off someone at the airport, now I have to pay £5 to do so. And so on.
Ben lives in a terrible world where slowly all the good things he enjoys are discontinued. Soon he will sit crying in an almost empty room, signed picture of Liz on the wall, as he contemplates the last bottle of coconut water and the final pack of peanut cookie.
This is a strange article. A teacher and a car dealer quit their jobs in Nigeria to become care workers in the UK. An Indian investment analyst wants to be a UK care worker. They can’t actually find any care jobs here. Is the care worker shortage a lie?
@echo_chamberz
Actually, you would. Exercise is a key component of diabetes management. (Perhaps the comedian knows this, and is just trolling his audience.)
@primalpoly
Medicine. The entire medical system is protected by multiple layers of laws & regulations, and lobbyists with vast experience. Even if AI could take on medicine, the gate-keepers won’t allow it.
@Rule3O3
@eigenrobot
The rules on UK police recruitment changed a few years ago: now they must have a university degree. You can imagine how this would have affected the type of person who joins the police force.
@CatholicCharm
American hospitals have a weird system where the babies are taken away from the mothers and mixed up in a room behind a glass window. No other country does this.
@KonstantinKisin
“Why don’t you have sports divided by weight and height?”
Somebody should tell her about weight classes in boxing and other combat sports: heavyweight, featherweight, etc.
@krishnanrohit
External consultants lend the voice of authority to a decision that the company already wants to make.
“We really don’t want to fire half of you and send your jobs to Asia, but McKinsey said it’s the only way.”
@GwendolynKansen
What’s the hook that draws girls into things like this? Did they prey on particularly vulnerable people? Did they attract new recruits with drugs? I presume they didn’t open with a truthful line such as “It’s like prostitution, only you don’t get paid”.
“Oi, ‘ave you got a loicence for that skateboard?” - A Christmas story.
Kid asked for a skateboard for Christmas. (Watching too much American content, obvs.) We thought we’d take him to the local skate park to practice. But no, you have to apply in advance for a pass. Madness.
We're often told that foreigners coming here is the price we pay for having had an empire. But Vietnam was historically under French influence; it was never part of the British empire. So why are they leaving France and entering the UK?
🇻🇳 Vietnamese nationals are now the largest group crossing illegally on small boats to the UK.
@CordeliaSkyNews
has been to rural central Vietnam to track down the people smugglers driving the surge 👇
Pop quiz: What is the “international reputation” of the Netherlands compared to Denmark; and how does it relate to each country’s immigration policies?
@Rule3O3
@eigenrobot
New recruits to the UK police need a degree, since 2020. A retired officer disagrees, saying: “The only degree a police officer needs is a degree of common sense - they'll learn on the job.”
@Poxo2022
@Liv_Lever
A student of mine rents room in a flatshare in Clapham for £1500 pcm. That’s why you can’t live off £25k a year in London. Don’t forget to deduct taxes etc
@timalmond
I’m amused at how the band’s followers have turned up in your comments. Presumably they’re searching for band gossip. (Their music seems to be ok, I’d have liked it when I was a teenager.)
@writeonfinance
@collnsmith
The difficulty for parents is spotting the difference between a self-paced education iPad app and a gamified pretend learning app.
@DanNeidle
Dan - can you explain how these Tory marginal rates work - in a little more detail - perhaps with an example of how much tax someone on 100k pays, 120k, and 200k?
@MEMEMUHSHEEN
@chadfelixg
Not quite. Milo got cancelled for saying that what happened to him was fine; and that at age 13 he was able to consent, and that there were no negative consequences. There’s no way to prove what would have become of him if he hadn’t engaged in such behaviour.
@zeta_globin
This is the promise of semaglutide. It doesn’t just help you lose weight, it improves cognition, and a whole host of other benefits that we’re only just discovering. Cutting sugar & carbs is the free version.
Another technology that the UK will never see because our Hand Car Wash economy incentivises cheap Vietnamese immigrant women in high street beauty salons to do this sort of work, not machines.
@echetus
Fake company’s directors don’t even face criminal charges, that’s a disgrace. No penalty for screwing over both the country and the would-be immigrants.
@cremieuxrecueil
When a company in the UK exceeds £85,000 in annual turnover (not profit), it becomes liable for 20% VAT on all goods & services sales. Many small companies (especially sole traders like plumbers) take great care to remain below the threshold.
@arisroussinos
This being 21st century London, they have to make it horrible. Every fountain is branded by the bureaucracy that signed it off. They have to build support for expanding the Mayor’s remit somehow.
@toad_spotted
When I was little, I didn’t understand the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. How could the townspeople not believe their own eyes, that the Emperor was naked? Now alas I see that it’s all too common; and I wonder how many similar cases I’ve missed.
@Empty_America
Really depends where. The jet stream keeps Western Europe snow-free, but further east, away from the Atlantic, there is plenty of snow. (This map also shows why the Alsace region should belong to Germany, not France.)
@guidoacasa
Crossrail / Elizabeth Line is one of the few good things to emerge from the last 15 years. The government signed the Crossrail Act in 2008, which is widely regarded as the tipping point when things stopped getting better. (London Bridge station is nice too, signed off in 2007.)
@pumkinbaer
@phl43
Yes, this. Travel means escaping from social pressure. At home you’re a plain girl; overseas you’re exotic, interesting merely by virtue of where you come from. (Absence of peers means possibility of shame-free sex too.)
@caesararum
@Ryan_Gasoline
Home Improvement has aged badly though. Tried watching it on Disney+ the other day, and it’s hard to get through.
Compare with Malcolm in the Middle which is still rather good.
@tszzl
I still don’t understand how Uber fails to make big $. It’s a regular taxi, but customers pay 20% extra for the app (cost up-front, ordering, payment, time to arrival, location, dispute resolution) and social features (star ratings). What are they getting wrong?
@seanldunn
@bog_beef
Even if this is true, being soft on crime generally hurts the poor more. If someone breaks into my car, it’s annoying but not devastating. If a poor person has their car windows smashed, the insurance deductible alone can be a major expense.
@DefaultAnonym
@4chanGreentxts
What would a single man’s apartment look like if televisions didn’t exist? Would there be a single chair pointing at a blank wall?
@animalologist
Depends on your definition of “friends”. Playing five-a-side football once a week then going for a pint afterwards with some of them, but it’s not the same depth of friendship as when you were 17.
@PstafarianPrice
It’s one of those annoying American things that us foreigners have to learn if we want to understand your TV shows; along with what “third base” means or how guns work.
@Yung_Spengler
@PaulSkallas
That’s how they talk on the phone too. You see drivers on their Bluetooth headsets all day long, talking endlessly and never pausing to listen to the other person.
@lilly_of_valley
@christapeterso
It used to be just ADD, but the name was revised in the 3rd edition of the DSM: they added the H because they discovered the Hitler connection.
Good thread. Those with weak family ties seek refuge in institutions. Corporations are quick to take advantage: HR mailshots encourage employees to think of the workplace as a surrogate family, albeit one that will happily outsource your job to Asia to save a few pennies.
This campaign group’s efforts on improving lorry safety are a shining example of how to run a campaign. Positive and outcome-focused; not endless grievance. They’ve achieved considerable success, well done to them.
@GreenJennyJones
We couldn't agree more. We've successfully campaigned for London-wide standards on bigger mirrors, dropped cabs and inbuilt cameras so lorry drivers can see the road around them better. These lorry minimum standards will ratchet up again this autumn
@ValidScience
@feelsdesperate
The lesson from WWII was “refugees are talented scientists and mathematicians”, which was true for Ashkenazi Jews (hugely overrepresented in Nobel prizes), but turns out isn’t true for refugees from most of the rest of the world.
@LeoMars75
Many urban Spanish ppl also have a rural house, so they still have a connection with country life. Contrast with UK where urban/rural people live parallel lives.
@0x49fa98
It has become a pop-psychology cliché, but the flight attendant’s instruction to put on your own mask before helping others is still true. What’s missing is the next step: help your in-group before helping the out-group.
@interpretantion
Writing stuff down gives you extra working memory for free. I make notes in meetings and everyone thinks I’m a genius when I recall stuff later.
"...for much of England and especially the North, there simply isn’t enough disposable income to sustain the additional, luxury good, cost of having that thriving, vibrant row of shops."
This isn’t false consciousness; young people just don’t know. Social housing is heavily concentrated; if you didn’t grow up nearby, it simply isn’t on your radar. The idea that 40% of a central London borough is social housing simply does not compute for outsiders.
I argued for the
@Telegraph
that young British progressives are suffering from false consciousness, since they don't seem to realise that the immigration and social housing policies they support are immiserating them
@ClarkesLatin
Prime Minister: “I will legislate to make it illegal for youths to wield machetes in Nottingham city centre” [even though it’s already covered by several broader laws].
@Holidaysin38285
The BBC’s Motherland (2017) was good. Perhaps too middle-class to be universally relatable, but definitely represents a shared culture for many.
@rpaton11
Because for the last eight years she has been living at the First Minister’s official residence, Bute House. In the same way the PM lives at 10 Downing Street.
@s8mb
May is a prime example of the Home Office view of the world (enforcement is all that matters) versus the Treasury view of the world (incentives are all that matters). In her view, the only way to build more homes is to pay housebuilders directly. She belongs in the Labour Party.
I really hate these artist’s illustrations of new housing developments. In practice there’s never enough parking and it ends up with cars occupying every square inch like
#2
below.
@pimlico_journal
Found this highly suspicious graph. Reports of spiking are highly media-driven; the late-2021 spike (haha) was driven by this report. The only surprise is that the Telegraph is three years late to the story.
@arisroussinos
A better comparison to Corfu is Inverness, population 47k, which is the effective capital of the highlands. Both cities have a university and an airport. They are the local centres for their wider area. Ramsgate is not. (Also, perhaps Kent native
@Peter88902568
can explain more.)
@kaschuta
The Narnia series explicitly weaves Christian theology into the story; even the resurrection (though it’s a bit /deus ex machina/). The characters make decisions which have moral consequences. It’s so rare to find such moral agency in modern books.
@Maggiolone85
They just claim they don’t want kids as a filter, a negotiation.
If you reply “me neither” then you’ve failed.
If you say “what about one or two?” you’ve failed.
The only right answer is “shame, I’m aiming for ten kids” - that gets their attention.
@IronEconomist
This thread has some discussion of the pros & cons of being oldest in the class. TLDR: being oldest is awesome, and the effect compounds every year; but parents do have to pay for an extra 11 months of pre-school childcare.
@lukas_ohl
The advantages run very deep: they're most apparent in sport and I think most commonly studied there, but it's also observed in school gifted and talented programmes, Oxford Uni graduations, Nobel Prizes, as well as political and business leadership.
@STLD98
@Rule3O3
@eigenrobot
No, only some forces dropped the degree requirement. In those forces, without a degree, you need to spend 1yr as a PCSO first; then three years as an apprentice; at the end of which, you have to write a 10,000 word dissertation. All this changes the people who choose to apply.
@DanNeidle
Dan, do you think senior HMRC case-workers and/or managers in complex cases like these should have performance-related pay, or possibly even revenue-sharing? So HMRC collects £14m, case-worker takes home 1% = £140k bonus (for example). Private sector often does this. Thoughts?