I was planning to keep bees, until someone informed me that honey bees outcompete native bumbles.

And I fucking love bumbles.

So now I'm modifying the garden to be bumble friendly, and living without enormous amounts of honey.

Pictrs will take a long time, unfortunately.

It's partly on me: I'd been putting off the upgrade due to the time required for almost half a TB of images.

But of course, the longer I procrastinated, the longer it took!

There is a link to our OpenCollective in the sidebar if you're feeling generous.

Thanks for reminding me, we were meaning to do a summary of our financials for the community soon!

Thanks, I've updated the link at the top.

People throwing mysterious liquids over other people is a problem, even if it can be comical. Imagine if it had been one of those nutters throwing bathroom cleaner.

Apparently that's a different person. More on this as it develops. Over to Emperor with sports news.

DM: "Are snowflakes making bioweapons against Nigel?"

It's about a month until the 12th, perhaps the orangemen are trying to drive the price down.

I honestly don't hate this policy. Keeping at least 3 days supplies with rotation is just common sense, right?
If something knocked the power/water out for a couple of days, every person with something in store is one less person the authorities have to worry about, until things either stabilise or get worse.

If they leave the country, we can assign a man with a portable bucket of sewage.
We will have no issues finding such a man: Most of Thames Water's customers would pay for the privilege.

I've previously advocated for the the first 1000L of any sewage runoff to be directed through executive's houses.

Maybe they would enjoy experiencing it first hand.

Water firms can get in the fucking sea.

I had to resist the offer of a tour of their facilities this month.
I was super curious, but I really didn't want to deal with the "hey, you seem like you like us, want to work here?" messages afterwards.

Reading busses work really well. Not extortionate prices, fairly regular, and a bus tracking system open to the public that (mostly) works.
It always amazes me when people are surprised that an enterprise designed to primarily provide a service to the people, rather than dividends, gives better value for money.

The people win in every direction.
Money goes back into better busses, OAP bus passes cost less to the taxpayer, and Reading gets snazzy busses in cool colours.

I used to keep one on my keyring.

I finally took it off after the 4th time I had to pull it out of my thigh.

I absolutely agree.
Honestly, if NameBrand posted their prices, I might have considered them, as once my time organising/plumbing (or paying a plumber) is factored in, the difference isn't so massive.
I just loathe the principle of having to get a quote for even the basic device in a box!

Same with certain home improvement companies that hope once you're on the line, they can close the sale there and then.
I swear they must make all their money off people who don't want to think about what the job involves, and just hand over a chequebook.

The water softener from Costco is £500, the one from ScrewFix is £400, but I'm curious how much the one from NameBrand is.
NameBrand website "Well, it can vary a lot depending on how complicated..."
Forum posts: "£2k including fitting and a year's salt, £1500 for the unit"
(Which isn't an insane price to just have it sorted, I just hate the bollocks excuses when everyone magically still comes out around £2k)

The physical staircase will cost me about £1000, then a few days of skilled labour for someone to fit.
I wonder how much one of those "we'll just handle it" companies in the back of the sunday supplement could do it for...Oh, that's 15 times the price, wonderful.

I've seen tomato plants growing in the station before. Not recently, possibly because my section of the country doesn't dump waste on the tracks any more.

Ah, gotcha.
Twenty, I might go for it.