Cautionary Tales by Tim Harford.
Takes stories of errors, mistakes, catastrophes of the far and recent past and analyses the causes of them and what lessons can be learned. Everything from assigning success to personality over circumstance to the “curse of information” to what to do in a plane crash.
Interesting, insightful, exceptionally well written and presented, always interesting and entertaining.
If you’re at all interested in numbers and statistics, and even if you’re not but like hearing experts deconstruct the claims and lies made by politicians and business people, then I highly recommend More or Less also from the BBC.
Montserrat in the Caribbean. Visited multiple times as a kid after the volcano as I had family working there in regeneration projects. Beautiful place, beautiful people, wouldove to see it again as an adult and see how it’s changed now.
We went on a highly illegal and potentially dangerous trip (if the volcano went off again, by the time we heard it, it would be too late to escape) to see the old airport from where you can see directly up the volcano and the path the pyroclastic flow took and covered the terminal building which was half buried in the dust.
There were wild horses roaming and nature was already starting to reclaim the place so the intervening 30 years probably have accelerated that and I’d love to see it.
They’re called ROMs, can’t give you links because that’s naughty but if you use your reputable search engine of choice for Gameboy ROMs you can find them pretty easily.
This cafe
I mean I try not to be a dick about spelling and grammar and stuff these days, but come on!
iamverysmart
You need to receive news from a broad variety of sources, not just those that agree with your viewpoint or have a particular agenda.
Al Jazeera obviously have a pro-Qatari but less so than Fox News for example or any billionaire owned newspaper/TV channel have biases.
Aggregate from all sides and the truth will be somewhere in the middle.
Human slaves! In an insect nation!
I think they just mean they weren’t very good at it
LOL California has the 5th largest economy in the world, bigger than France, Italy, Brazil or India.
Pretty sure they can fix some minor property damage caused by some peaceful protestors and the National Guard.
I sing Sweet Child O Mine and Sweet Caroline with the other songs melodies. Confuses people nicely.
Any of the 6 million versions of Hallelujah except the original Leonard Cohen and Jeff Buckley.
I swear wannabe pop singers see it as some sort of rite of passage but they universally murder it either by trying to replicate on of those two and coming up painfully short or embellishing it with flourishes and superfluous variations.
It doesn’t make you look deep and thoughtful it just highlights what an average singer you are.
Came here to suggests these two choices!
1 - England is not an island, you mean Great Britain.
2 - Almost half the food eaten in the UK has been imported from overseas.
3 - A large proportion (it’s difficult to get exact figures and it fluctuates) of energy is imported from abroad in the forms of oil and gas.
Great Britain, and the wider UK, has not been self sufficient for ~600 years relying on colonialism and a maritime empire to meet its needs and trade since it collapsed. If it had to rely on resources available within the island it would collapse in days.
I’m all in for crazy hockey. Boosters, bumpers, multipuck, moving goals, tilting ice, pucks made of different materials, sticks made of different materials, boxing gloves appear at centre ice giving the player who grabs them 30 second free pass for roughing.
Let them fight to the death.
MMMMMMMULTIBALLLLLLL
Any sport, doesn’t really matter. Periodically during the game more balls start getting added into the playing field to spice things up, a la pinball tables.
Tennis, Football, Volleyball, Baseball, Basketball etc etc
2 nights in a hotel in Sydney. Arrived at about 10pm straight from the airport. Unmanned entry to had to call someone from reception to come and give me the key despite arranging all this in advance.
Got in the room and the AC was broken so as a Brit arriving in Australia for the first time it was unbearably hot and the room stank of damp.
About the worst way to start jetlag recovery and I got out after the first night despite paying in advance.
Edit, oh and the fire alarm went off at 3AM!
Blast Corps
I once had a really long running bout of hiccups, like more than a day and it was really draining on me and I was very tired. I looked myself in the mirror and said “you don’t have hiccups any more” and they stopped immediately.
Tried it again several times since and it never worked again but for that brief moment I was invincible.