I’m currently reading Babel by RF Kuang, which definitely can’t be described as woman-centric (indeed, a major criticism is that its female characters are relatively shallow and few and far between). Good book though.

If you want an old classic to try, give Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees a go. Very unique and fairly influential cult classic from 1926.

I wonder how sophisticated this fraud is? They could have it rush to 50k, and then “catch up” by running more slowly for the next few 10s of thousands to cover the tracks.

canonical is (or at least I think it is) South African

Canonical is British. Headquarters are in London.

The founder, Mark Shuttleworth, is a South African born British citizen, hence the African name for the distro. But it is and always has been British.

Not quite the same thing I think.

My understanding of “no contingency” is more to do with inspections, certifications etc. I.e. an offer has been made that isn’t going to be cancelled if the structural survey comes back with a load of issues to fix.

“Chains” in UK real estate lingo are about whether your sale is tied to other sales. For example, if you’re buying a house from an owner-occupier who won’t move out (and give you your new house) until the new house that they’re buying is ready- that’s an onward chain. A chain in the other direction would be someone who says that they’ll buy a house, but will only have the money to make the purchase once they’ve got a sale locked in for their current house. Selling a house with “no onward chain” is telling the buyer that they can have it as soon as they’ve got the money, and that the seller isn’t waiting for anything.

Chains can get very messy and complicated, as you can end up with s dozen house sales all tied up with each other waiting for one house in the chain to be ready to go before any of the others can go.

I’ve just discovered that the vets in my town are owned by Mars Inc.

You know, of “Mars Bars” fame.

Who knew?

The family next door used to have furious, thunderous rows all the time, until the couple got divorced and the dad moved out; now it’s all very harmonious.

In my old house I once heard the woman having sex with someone who definitely wasn’t her partner (as he was very definitely out at work at the time). That relationship ended before I moved house!

I’m deaf as a post, so when I watch TV I have a tendency to watch it too loud; apologies to my neighbours for that. But actually I don’t watch a lot of telly these days, so they mostly dodge that bullet.

You can’t spell “public transport” without “trans”!

Imagine trying to dust that. Just think of the cobwebs.

Maybe I’m just tired at the end of a long day, but I’m also completely unable to parse that headline. Somebody’s mum is fingering what now?

maybe turn the three sisters

Two of the three precogs were boys, by the way.

Even the US he ce why Vauxhall exists.

Not to detract from your point (because you’re completely correct), but just an FYI that Vauxhall/Opel has been European owned for some time now. General Motors sold it to Peugeot back in 2017, and it’s now part of Stellantis.

Ford had (and still has) essentially the same arrangement, only in their case they use the same brand. Ford Europe and Ford USA are pretty much entirely separate companies, owned by the same parent; hence why their European car lineup looks mostly nothing like their US lineup.

FFIX is my favourite FF game (yeah, fight me on it), which means this news is either very good or very bad depending on how the remake ends up.

Obviously toasted. I mean what the fuck.

I’m pretty free and easy with the toppings. Marmite is good. Jam is good. Golden syrup is good.

My dad used to make his standard “Sunday night supper” of crumpets with cheese, garlic, sliced tomato, done under the grill cheese-on-toast style. Haven’t had that for ages, but it was awesome.

trying to tell us that in a couple years we’ll have a full-on AI film

To be fair, he never said it would be any good.

We need a US Community on Revolt too not just Lemmy

Never heard of it before.

What’s the elevator pitch?

Now you mention it, Branston Pickle pizza sounds pretty great.

Like a cheese and pickle sandwich in pizza form.

“We don’t like the proposed new Coke recipe, so we’re switching to drinking raw undiluted sewage instead”.

There’s a direct quote from the company.

According to a statement sent to The Verge by Eddie Garcia on behalf of Nintendo, it says preorders will no longer begin on April 9th:

“Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April 9, 2025 in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions. Nintendo will update timing at a later date. The launch date of June 5, 2025 is unchanged.”

I’m also in Europe.

Presumably the same tariffs will apply to PlayStations and Xboxes too (both made in China with components from Korea, and the former being a Japanese company).

Also, most PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones.

American gamers aren’t going to be overwhelmed with cheaper choices.

They’re definitely creatively stale, but they’re also undeniably good at what they do. They have by far the best selling console of the last generation, and are the only console company to consistently post healthy profits on their operation.

Is it a bit naff that their next generation of games will almost certainly be yet another Zelda, yet another Mario, yet another Pokémon? Absolutely. But if their next Zelda game is yet another best-selling critically acclaimed success, who are we to say that they’ve got the wrong approach?