MouldyCat
@MouldyCat@feddit.uk
- Comment on Cardiff is set to become the first city in the UK to introduce higher parking charges for SUVs 3 days ago:
I just slammed my balls in the rear door of my Range Rover a couple of times. Am I good now?
- Comment on Only one in 50 bike thefts result in a charge, shocking figures reveal 3 days ago:
Better than Worcester police then. I had my bike nicked from a bike rack by a park & ride’s mini bus station. The guy working there spent a little while shuttling through the video and found crystal clear footage of the rapscallion arriving on a worse bike, messing around by my bike for a minute or two (cutting the lock), then riding off with it. You couldn’t hope for better evidence of the crime, and if he was known to police - he certainly acted like he’d done this sort of thing before - it would’ve been easy to identify him. The cops didn’t even bother to go in and see it.
After several weeks, I got a call from our trusty boys in blue about it. Ah great, I thought naively, they haven’t forgotten, just backlogged. But it quickly became obvious, from his leading questions, that the copper was actually hoping to catch me out as an insurance fraudster and had no intention of doing jack-shit to actually get the thing back. I lost it a bit with him and I think he did end up feeling kind of bad - although not bad enough to send someone round to view the footage of course.
- Comment on An academic was aghast when her partner was accused of IRA activity. After his trial, he confessed 3 weeks ago:
This does sound like it might be a very interesting book. I am intrigued to find out more about Mary’s point of view. She says she almost dumped him when he came clean, not because of his direct support for the IRA but because of the deception:
“I know Michael isn’t a terrible person, he’s a very good person,” she said. “He just didn’t put me first, and I don’t know whether I see that as betrayal. He didn’t intend it.”
It seems there’s a wider question about when is it acceptable to keep secrets from a person you’re in a relationship with. It doesn’t seem like he was deceitful about his political leanings, just about details of his direct involvement. That kind of seems very forgivable, although given the circumstances I can see why she contemplated ending it at the time.
- Comment on Would you pay $100 for a movie? Criterion and the 'second golden age' of physical media 4 weeks ago:
best method I found to watch old movies
especially as many public libraries loan out DVDs.
- Comment on More than 40% of private renters ration energy use to afford bills, study finds 1 month ago:
this is a really weird headline, with the use of “ration” like that.
Who doesn’t “ration” i.e. restrict their energy use? i have always done this - I turn off lights in rooms when no one is in there, I turn off heating when I’m out of the house, I don’t turn heating on until it’s really cold and I’m maxed out on jumpers and woolly underpants. It’s not just to save money - aren’t we all supposed to be restricting our energy use, what with climate change and all that?
So the article isn’t really about people having to restrict their energy use when before they didn’t, it’s really about a survey done by Citizens Advice to highlight the hardships renters endure thanks to poorly maintained and insulated houses. It seems that Citizens Advice were the ones who chose the word “ration” and to put the focus on people reducing their energy use to save money, but I don’t understand what makes them think that will make their survey results more powerful.
Something straightforward like, “Latest price hikes unfairly hit poor people in badly maintained rental housing” would seem to me to be much better.
- Comment on Chinese carmakers told to improve locking devices for UK market 1 month ago:
higher levels of car theft than China
this is what happens when you let thieves off without so much as 10 years hard labour followed by a bullet to the back of the head!
- Comment on We should be allowed to carry swords for self defence 1 month ago:
Sikh sect which carries swords
According to wikipedia, all (male) Sikhs who choose to become Khalsa (and thus gain the surname “Singh”, meaning lion) are supposed to keep 5 special items with them at all times, one of which is a dagger - but it was originally a sword. All these 5 items begin with the letter K, and include a kirpan (the dagger/sword), the kara (a steel bracelet) and kesh (uncut hair, typically wrapped in a turban). I’m not sure, but KDE is probably recommended also.
One thing I didn’t know - it’s forbidden for such Sikhs to eat “halal” meat. That can’t be easy in some countries.
- Comment on Who decides when and where you work? The battle is raging in Whitehall, and the result may affect us all 2 months ago:
It is and it’s not even about whether the work is being done well or not, it’s about showing fealty to your lords and masters. If you want to check the quality of my work and give intelligent and constructive feedback, I actually appreciate that and it helps me to gain confidence and do a better job (regardless of *where* I’m working from).
Granted, based on my experience, it’s probably a minority of managers who actually possess the skills to constructively appraise someone’s work, so for most of them, just shut up, keep out of my way and let me get done what needs to be done.
- Comment on ‘Don’t call this racist’: row grows over motives behind England flag campaign 2 months ago:
You’ll also see the national flag flying happily in France and Spain. Not everywhere, but it doesn’t have any negative connotation. In Germany however the national flag does have dodgy overtones. It seems to be related to whether your country has anything less than pleasant in its recent history.
- Comment on Dairy farmers say worker shortage is threatening UK food security 2 months ago:
This really depends on where you live. I didn’t realise how spoilt I was living in Berlin until I moved away. Vegan butter that is as good as actual butter is widely available there, at about the same price - albeit unsalted.
I’m now in France, where big supermarkets often have a whole row of fridges dedicated to butter, and I’ve not as yet even seen one place selling any kind of modern vegan butter. I think it was the same story in Spain too, although I wasn’t staying in large cities there.
I’ve tried a range of different vegan butters while I’ve been at home in the UK and they all just taste like margarine. France I can understand, as they have a big dairy culture (no pun intended - that would be cheese), but I’m at a loss to explain why the good stuff isn’t widely available in the UK as the demand is there.
- Comment on “When the fun stops, stop.” Addiction experts consider the rise of gambling in the U.K. a test case 3 months ago:
That depends where you keep it surely
- Comment on Britons could soon install balcony solar panels in flats and rental homes 3 months ago:
Yeah I think you’d definitely want a battery. TBH I just threw that question about grow lamps in there to draw attention to how you can not only run low/medium power solar setups in Germany, but you can also grow a couple of weed plants for your own use.
I think Germany might actually be the only country in Europe where you can do that fully legally? I used to think growing your own weed was fully legal in Spain and Portugal, but now after speaking to some of my family who live in Spain, I think it’s really just a grey area and not technically legal at all.
Anyway, I’m not actually trying to grow my own weed or anything like that, I just think it’s a stupid thing to make illegal. So go Germany, we’re all counting on you!
- Comment on 12 of England’s regional mayors back plan for ‘national active travel network’ 3 months ago:
why would you rather people go by bus than by bike or foot? It seems everything is better about safe bike & pedestrian routes - they are healthy, produce less pollution (both noise and fumes), often quicker, safer and more agreeable for residents, not to mention cheaper to maintain.
- Comment on Britons could soon install balcony solar panels in flats and rental homes 3 months ago:
That’s neat. Someone told me about inverters you could just plug into a wall socket and have it feed appliances in the house here in Spain, but I just thought they were crazy.
In Germany, can you use the solar panels to directly feed the grow-lamps for a couple of healthy cannabis plants? Is that also permitted?
- Comment on HS2 to be delayed again as costs spiral by £37bn after 'litany of failure' 4 months ago:
Definitely not, lol. Nearby countries with fast rail - France, Spain, Germany - would perhaps give a slight bemused smile in the direction of HS2. Those are big countries where high-speed rail makes actual sense - as just one example, from the German town of Karlsruhe right by the border with France, you can take a TGV to Lyon, about 350 miles away. It takes around 5 hours and will probably cost you less than €100.
However all those countries are all too familiar with their own governments mismanaging public works. So they wouldn’t be shocked at the huge sacks of cash that are being tipped into great holes in the ground, and any laughter would be at the idea that this ridiculously unnecessary governmental vanity project is even being built at all.
- Comment on Interesting interview with the creator of Junk store on YouTube 4 months ago:
Gardiner Bryant is great. So great, you don’t have to suffer YouTube to keep up with his videos, he also publishes to PeerTube:
- Comment on Nexus Mods Sale Sparks Concern in Modding Community 4 months ago:
A collective can be a great way to run a company, for some cases. I lived with a girl who worked at a cafe that was run as a collective - it meant that people had a fair say in decisions that affected them. They could vote on their own wages, working conditions, and no one was barking out orders bossing them around. The owner was an old-school left-winger who was doing this out of pure idealism. He was still the one with the financial risk, he dealt with banks, ensured taxes were dealt with, and all the other tasks involved in running a business such as that.
- Comment on Nexus Mods Sale Sparks Concern in Modding Community 4 months ago:
Nothing stopping you trying!
- Comment on Nexus Mods Sale Sparks Concern in Modding Community 4 months ago:
Great. Yes. Under some kind of egalitarian free-energy tech utopia such as you’re describing, websites like Nexus mods would be even better. Sadly there are no such systems already operating for us to move to, and we do not yet have the technology to try creating a new one.
So any other political systems that are more real-world?
- Comment on Nexus Mods Sale Sparks Concern in Modding Community 4 months ago:
How would this specific problem be better under another system?
- Comment on Nexus Mods Sale Sparks Concern in Modding Community 4 months ago:
I guess you still have the issue of someone needing to pay for the huge number of downloads, most of which are going to come from users who make no other contributions to the site. Maybe you could combine a fedi site with torrents or something?
- Comment on The Guardian has rolled out new secure messaging technology which allows sources to anonymously contact journalists. 4 months ago:
The tech behind the tool conceals the fact that messaging is taking place at all. It makes the communication indistinguishable from data sent to and from the app by our millions of regular users.
That is very clever.
So, by using the Guardian app, readers are effectively providing ‘cover’ and helping us to protect sources.
And of course they take the opportunity to push their app! I generally hate apps, especially for things like newspapers. This is the first reason I’ve seen that might make me install one.
- Comment on Mum locked up in prison after what she did with two Kinder eggs 4 months ago:
The police even have the audacity to try and moralise about this: “As a result of her selfish actions that day, she is now behind bars and her four children will now be without their mother for a considerable period of time.”
No, it’s a result of our useless coppers choosing to waste taxpayer money harassing adults for entertaining themselves in ways that cause no harm to anyone else. Selfish actions my arse. You guys are the ones who have kept those kids from seeing their mum, nobody else. How about the police do something more worthwhile with their time, like investigating burglary and other anti-social criminality.
- Comment on Byond game engine suffers a weeks-long DDoS attack, apparently because a wanna-be Bond villain is trying to force it to go open source: 'Attacks on Byond servers are a symptom of your obstinance' 4 months ago:
“We demand you voluntarily side with progress”
They have an interesting concept of voluntary to be sure
- Comment on What's the worst spelling you've seen? 5 months ago:
You must be able to see that giving your daughter your mother’s name as a middle name is not at all the same as giving your son your own name?
- Comment on What's the worst spelling you've seen? 5 months ago:
Vanity isn’t it? Pathetic male vanity. Never hear women doing it do you.
- Comment on The NHS gave £330 million contract to Palantir to build an NHS data platform. Well we've found out that most English hospitals aren't using it. 5 months ago:
Three. Hundred. Million. Pounds.
Government IT spending is absolutely insane. That’s 100 people on £100k a year for 30 years. How does this get through oversight? And then they deliver a shitty system and there’s no comeback?
- Comment on Urgent ‘do not eat’ warning issued for popular meal sold in Tesco and Morrisons 5 months ago:
if this is part of an effort to get beef recognised as a type of fish by the Catholic church, keep it up, this’ll probably work.
- Comment on Liquid Trees 5 months ago:
Trees do actually improve air quality, by absorbing harmful gases like sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide through their leaves. Additionally they can reduce particulate pollution by up to 70% - bbc.com/…/20200504-which-trees-reduce-air-polluti…
- Comment on Sycamore Gap tree destroyed in 'moronic mission', court told 5 months ago:
you mean you always plead not guilty, don’t you?