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3 yr. ago

  • Oh, shit, right, so I get to share something I learned fairly recently.

    For much of human history, wealth could be measured many ways but by far the most powerful currency was land. Land meant resources, and the land's value was determined by what respirce it produced: fertile floodplains meant crops, lakes for fishing, forests for hunting, and, worst-case scenario, moorland could be used for grazing livestock. But what if that wasn't enough? What if you had huge tracts of land but your narcissism and insecurity were so overwhelming that you just needed to prove yourself even more?

    Enter: lawns. Lawns are fields of grass, which is a useless crop that can only really be used for grazing. But the grass is kept so short that livestock can't graze on it. But grass like that can only be grown on plains that are ideal for crops, so you need to get rid of the crops. And short grass needs tending, tending with more care than any crop, so you need to have workers dedicated to it. That's what a lawn is: it's bragging, it's saying "not only do I have loads of top-quality land and an army of workers, I can afford to piss away huge swathes of it for absolutely no reason other than to prove that I can." It's hard to image a greater and more grotesque display of boujee excess than the lawn.

    Of course, this is what makes the modern lawn all the more pathetic: that neatly parcelled-out vast tract of land you can afford to squander as a display of your immeasurable wealth is, like, a few meters across. It's like the Stamford apes experiment: they know what they must do, but not why they're doing it and, if they knew what a lawn really was and where it came from, I can't imagine many would be quite so attached. Then again, maybe they would be. Maybe they really do think their home is a castle and that they live in a kingdom they can walk around in thirty second.

  • A few notes on terminology: Great Britain is a geographic term, not a legal one. Great Britain is an island divided between England, Scotland and Wales which all, along with Northern Ireland, form the United Kingdom. The demonym of United Kingdom, confusingly, is "British". Sometimes "Great Britain" is used to specifically refer to the UK without Northern Ireland, though there are plenty of parts of England, Wales and especially Scotland that are also not on Great Britain.

    Anyway, to answer your question: the currency of the entire UK is Pound Sterling, which is the same everywhere: £1 in London is the same as £1 in Edinburgh. Some Banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland have permission from their respective devolved governments to print their own banknotes, but they must be backed by Bank of England notes stored in a vault and, importantly, they are not automatically accepted elsewhere. Some large retailers will accept them, but shops in Northern Ireland, England and Wales are under no legal obligation to accept a Scottish banknote, whereas the Bank of England notes are accepted everywhere.

    Also, while the banks that issue notes in Northern Ireland and Scotland are just regular, privately-owned commercial banks, the Bank of England is entirely publicly owned and doesn't offer much in the way of traditional commercial banking services.

  • I'm on track to buy my first house this year and I'm genuinely looking forward to getting a solar setup. I've already built out a couple of small systems elsewhere, so I can't wait to get my own.

  • Did you read the article? Or even the two paragraphs long summary of the article OP posted?

  • I can't recall who first said it, but Roger Moore is a pretty good name for a Bond Boy.

  • Honestly I'm just disappointed we didn't get a Homestar Runner cartoon.

  • i = (1÷Md)×blow

  • Sorry if this was already posted, but I didn't see it:

    There Will Come Soft Rains by Sara Teasdale

    There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

    And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

    Robins will wear their feathery fire Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

    And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done.

    Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly;

    And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone.

    There's also a short story by Ray Bradbury with the same title that quotes the poem.

  • My headphone's app has a DSP effect for puke and a slider to adjust the chunkiness.

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  • Home automation master race checking in. Do it. I had the same issue so I replaced the switch with a relay paired with sensors for motion, humidity and, ahem, volatile organic compounds (eg stink, stenk, stunk and stank). It solved a number of issues.

  • Given how far Tim Apple's tongue has snaked up inside Trump's fat ass this last year I wouldn't worry too much about the "willingly" bit.

  • Altogether now, and-a-one, and-a-two, and-a-one-two-three...

    BUT HER EMAILS

  • Yeah, it's like when firefighters "save" people from burning building and everyone's like, "well done firefighters, you did a good job" and I'm over here being smart and sensible saying "if firefighters were such heroes, why did the building burn down in the first place?" because I am very smart and sensible.

  • See also: Saints Row.

  • A PC game called Iron Helix. I was really young when I got it and it has already been out few years at that point so I'm pretty sure it was a discount re-release I found in a bargain bin.

    Back in the FMV craze of the nineties, it was one of the better titles. It's an incredibly tense cat-and-mouse game, kind of like a 3D Pac-Man. You control a scientific research probe navigating a drifting deep-space battleship in an attempt to prevent it from autonomously attacking a peaceful planet, all while trying to work out what happened to the crew and deciphering the clues they left, and the whole time you are being hunted by the ship's security robot with nothing but a chiming proximity sensor letting you know when it's approaching. Brilliant game, super tense.

  • Every socioeconomic graph ever

    Well, that's not true. Here in the UK, for example, we'd replace "Ronald Reagan" with "Margaret Thatcher".

  • Pigs can be raised as house pets and enjoy a good blankie more than perhaps any other animal (including humans because we're just animals too, yeah?) but also remember that pigs are shockingly omnivorous and will eat human flesh if the fancy takes them. I know that's true of cats but I reckon I could fuck up a cat if I needed to. Pigs, not so sure.

  • Pretty sure pigs are ©Monsanto now.

  • Honestly if I'm feeling a bit peckish and fancy a sneaky snack I'll burn down a rainforest, grow a load of soy (...beans?), eat them, then find a gentle gorilla with eyes that reveal deep wisdom as it tearfully surveys the smouldering ruins of it's ancient homeland and just punch the fucker in the face. If I'm feeling extra naughty I don't even log it in my calorie counter.