crazy backbench MP who wanted a hard brexit? yeah folks are going to listen to her 🤣

I’ve been permanently VPN’d at the gateway to a private server since the Snowden revelations, and am not affected.

my expectations are low from the film, I’ll mostly go to see it for the NiN soundtrack in a proper cinema with good quality sound.

Also the number of off-duty patrollers Tom Paris was said to have bombed in “The Chute”

Also this I guess

be careful. stablecoins are a step towards central bank digital currency. once CBDC is established, it’s all over for freedom to spend money.

bums - what about “Stoves”? they’re a more budget friendly brand, still made in the UK though.

Can you get Mercury cooker/oven/hob where you are? I had one at a previous house and it was built like a tank - to the extent I had to leave it when I moved. It would have needed a crane to move it.

The Epstein files that Trump isn’t named in? that are a complete nothing-burger and also a democrat hoax? They shut the government down and curtail their own legislative agenda for that?

Dunnet is a good hour-long game. Comes with emacs.

No, they need to be made to put it right. But that requires a strong regulatory framework, sustained pressure from government backed with expertise and oversight from a capable civil service and it will take years.

Or we can burn it all down and get faraj who will not give two shits about water quality. The choice is ours.

100% I’d love to see nationalised utilities more than anyone else but we need to be realistic that the choices are:

1. the government spends an obscene amount of money to buy out the private interests, economy collapses and faraj gets in, or
2. the government changes laws and takes ownership of the companies (and the debts) some way, needs to borrow tons to service the debts, economy collapses and faraj gets in, or
3. the government just straight up steals control and the shareholders eat the losses. The above scenario plays out where pension funds collapse, the country is punished by investors withdrawing, economy collapses, faraj gets in. Free holidays to El salvador all round.

I guess my solution that would be a UPS that detects the power outage, provides 1-2 minutes of power while a connected controller (a raspberry pi or similar) forces the inverter into off-grid mode. When power is restored, a connected current clamp/CT sensor can tell the raspberry pi to cancel off-grid mode.

A bit complex but I suppose the other option is relay isolators / mains contractors which are a bit too “high voltage” for me

this github has some good tips and a kit list for an example modbus setup with an ESP32. I know you can also make more advanced ones with a Raspberry Pi and Home Assistant.

Discharging when the grid is down I’m now so sure about. The inverter has an “off grid” mode but you’ll need to check the regulations about having a live connection since it might be dangerous to have your property and cabling still be live when there is an outage - you might injure someone trying to repair the damage at the other end.

I have had a 2.4kWp system for two years. Solis inverter, Pylontech batteries and a Myenergi Eddi.

The good: charging the batteries up at night (on an Octopus two rate tariff) means never paying more than 7p for electricity. In summer I maybe import 3kWh per day. Because the solar energy heats the hot water (via the Eddi) the gas bill has halved. The system I expect to last for >20 years and I expect full payback in around 7 years. A good investment. Since the inverter is chinese made they will probably remotely disable it before they invade, so I’ll get some advance warning and can brush up on my mandarin.

The bad: almost everything else I have installed (car charger, heat pump etc) has been more painful and required multiple visits from an electrician to sort out - I don’t want the solar batteries to discharge into the car when I charge it, and I don’t want the heat pump to drain the battery either. The installer was terrible and it took ages to get it all right. I had to hack the inverter with a modbus bypass to get it to work with Homeassistant. Thinking of getting aircon upstairs and dreading the conversation with the installer.

Overall: 10/10 recommend, wish the government would force everyone to have solar panels.

Solis inverters work with HA via modbus.

fun fact, in the UK the offence is “failing to decrypt the device when required to do so” making these measures quite dangerous.

That said, unless you are being charged under a national security crime, the maximum sentence for “failing to decrypt the device when required to do so” is up to two years, so the game’s the game.

I wasn’t surprised. Trans-masc romance is not going to appease the political leadership of the country. Why take the risk of a twitter/truth-social tirade?

Yes the concept of a wealth tax is indeed popular in the UK right now, but the challenge as with similar taxes that target the wealthy (like capital gains taxes) is that there are so many loopholes that implementing it to be effective is really tough. An example:

• a high net worth individual owns a company worth £100m. what tax should she pay? if it’s a 1% wealth tax, how does that tax get collected? does she have to sell some of the business to the state each year for zero cost? does she have to find another investor to buy some of the business and pay that out to the government?
• the business has a bad year and is now only worth £80m. does the owner get a £20m tax break now? should the treasury refund the £1m?
• the business owner goes to the bank and takes a loan of £50m with the business as security. what tax is due now? the owner can use the £50m for whatever she wants, but taxes are not due on loans.
• she uses the £50m to buy a large amount of property abroad as an investment. what tax is due on those next year? does she have to sell a property every year to pay the wealth tax?
• finally, the business owner decides to take a stake in a large overseas renewable energy company and buys a 40% holding worth £10m. what tax is due on that holding and how is it collected?

most wealthy individuals have very little in the bank, and their wealth is based on notional ownership of valuable assets like companies. this is just one example of where it will be very difficult to implement a tax system that doesn’t cause business owners to take their money elsewhere to invest, or on the other hand to have endless court battles to force them to sell assets at some value to pay a tax bill.

Greens come out with some crazy policies sometimes which turn off leftie voters.

Why don’t Greens align on a sensible, costed and achievable progressive policy platform instead of making half their manifesto fringe issues like banning GM food, banning nuclear power, interfering in medical research etc.

“Ma’am you’re pointing it wrong. Your foot is down there.”