More seriously, my Romanian housemate prepared a massive bowl (a huge kitchen mizing bowl) of some sort of mayonnaise salad for the house with chopped peppers, eggs, onions and pickled veg.

Russian salad, large Tupperware tubs of it are much loved all over eastern europe and central Asia lol

I have had good success at this price point with items from ITZoo, they sell on refurbished ex lease corporate machines, so a bit older but durable, things like Thinkpads as suggested above

TDA run these routes as commercial cycling holidays, worth checking out to get an idea of a reasonable route that is feasible and their timings:
Cairo – Cape Town

As mentioned the mental health/social benefits of dog ownership far outweighs any environmental impact

Tell that to the people suffering the brunt of the environmental impacts

I use the one’s in the link, they do what they need to

Teenage years spent going in working clubs/ local con club to play snooker and drink flat beer, loved it. Some proper oddballs and weird rules but was worth it to play on a decent table for the price of the light and keeping the shandy’s flowing, was definitely an education.

Clearly a jitty

Mt Gox is the classic example of why not to keep things on an exchange, Bitgrail was another failure where I personally got caught out. However, the major exchanges are probably now more safer for many people that a hardware wallet, lots of people still lose there passwords, wallets, seeds and you are equally stuffed. Also consider if you are only buying small amounts, gas fees for Eth based tokens are currently insane and you will lose out on transfer off and on to the exchange. Coinbase are about to have an IPO to be listed on NYSE, it would be disastrous for them to run off with your money or lose it. Do you think Tesla or Blackrock are sticking there crypto on a thumbdrive? No they use a custodial service provide by the likes of Coinbase of Gemini. I would say the larger the amount you have, the more you should consider a hardware wallet but consider the pro’s and con’s of all the options, it isn’t all pro’s.

I just got a bit concerned when the site asked me to upload a ID photo,is that normal?Im only thinking of investing 500 pounds so is kraken better than coin base for this.

All the major exchanges do it now as part of Know Your Customer (KYC) to stop fraudulent activity. Kraken is more security focused so should be OK but there have been exchanges in the past that have leaked customer information which isnt great obviously. Sadly if you want to invest in crypto it is a risk you have to take. Kraken, Binance, Gemini and Coinbase are the major options and none of them perfect

Common uses of crypto that aren’t speculation driven:
-people in places like Venezuela who are keen to avoid inflation
-people in area’s with no functioning banking system such as war zones and refuge camp
-certain demographics in some regions who are excluded from holding bank accounts in their own name
-transferring money to family overseas and avoiding losing a chunck to western union

These happen in significant volumes daily and many of them have projects that tackle these specific cases, such as XLM, Nano, RSR, XMR

Sure some gets used for illicit purposes but guess what gets used more for facilitating human trafficking, drug smuggling and organised crime? USD, GBP and Euro’s

I picked up a Pentax KS-2 which si a quirky but decent camera from MPB last week to replace my K-50 which just suffered a fault. It was £229 and is a great camera for the money.

For the last few months I’ve been doing the SMM workout plan by Tom Morrison – and it’s massively improved things. More than anything it’s taught me a lot about where my weaknesses and imbalances are. For the price of a single physio/chiro session it’s worth a go.

https://tommorrison.uk/products/the-simplistic-mobility-method

Took a punt on this and did the assessment and first session earlier, couple of the exercises I couldn’t even attempt, body just can’t move that way! Look forwarded to seeing some progress over the coming weeks and months

Reason’s to be hopeful on vaccine rollout:
https://twitter.com/rowlsmanthorpe/status/1350181996258095104

I thought there was something on Channel4 news about the situation in Brazil – one of the places that had 70% infection rate in the first wave is getting hit extremely badly again.

It’s Manaus which is currently being overwhelmed and seeing its healthcare provision collapse

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Basecamp internal rules and how to encourage more of that async / “write it up” working rather than exhausting endless chat and meetings. The “working out loud” ethos promoted by Microsoft, Slack and the like makes for an awful lot of noise and tangents when quietly thinking it through and getting a proper first draft together would be a better approach.

https://basecamp.com/guides/how-we-communicate

Posted 6 days ago

Just read these guidelines and found myself nodding my head the whole time, really wish I could work in such an environment, so many of the bugbears I have of corporate life would be eliminated working like this

Just noticed I can buy a Bitcoin tracker on my AJBell ISA.

Is it still available? I thought all these had been shut down in the last couple of weeks due to UK regulatory changes

According to my colleague, there’s no way the court case will go against them because the whole world is waiting to use whatever it is they provide. Most “normal” investors will be too scared to stick it out, but once the courts rule, the price will soar. It’s pretty much guaranteed….. apparently!

He is right the court case probably won’t go ahead as they will probably settle for a large out of court fine. The price hasn’t dropped that much as it only impacts US exchanges and is a global market, so price has been remarkably resilient but as it has been delisted from a number of large exchanges, I don’t see money flooding back in for it, everything else has risen around it so any money tied up it has just lost out on the gains that could of been had elsewhere.

Coinbase are legit but super expensive to dollar cost average BTC. Never tried Kracken but looks less legit than Trading212 / Coinbase.

If you like coinbase, have you tried coinbase pro? It has much cheaper fees.

The regulation change is rubbish as no longer any way that I am aware of yo buy within an ISA wrapper

PayPal are starting to enable BTC transactions, right?

Only in the US so far but it will be coming worldwide, they bought a large volume in December

If this modelling is correct then surely the result is baked in at this point?
https://twitter.com/globalhlthtwit/status/1345140662056972292

Long way from cool but I drive one and like it far more than I should, Honda Jazz has great MPG, I can get 55-60mpg on the motorway, is always near the top on the reliability scores, has the magic seats and is generally a great thing for getting from A to B and before covid I was doing 20k miles a year in it so ignore the people who say it isn’t a motorway car. I am also 6’2 and have no issue with space or comfort.

Could you potentially delay the start of school for 5-year-olds for a year?

Some Tories had been proposing to up the age of school starting to 6 and getting rid of GCSE’s, would seem like a good time to accelerate that plan if they were ever considering really doing it:
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/oct/08/tory-mps-back-ditching-gcse-exams-english-school-system-overhaul

Who was this. Gove said it was all fine

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/28/coronavirus-michael-gove-reopening-englands-schools-will-involve-trade-offs

They will be compared against their same age peers so it wont really matter. They socio economic aspect is very valid though

It isn’t an comparable experience within age groups is it though? Even ignoring socio economic impacts the disparity between regions is huge, I work remotely from all of my colleagues (midlands vs south coast) and the majority of their kids have been in school full time since September while my daughter has been sent home once for one week and three times for 14 days, the first couple of times remote learning consisted of getting sent a powerpoint to read yourself or being emailed a worksheet, it got better letter on but the experience of in class teaching of my colleagues kids vs my daughter half the time aren’t comparable.
An example is they are learning Macbeth, it was supposed to be finished by Christmas to move on to the next text but they have only got to Act 2 as so many kids couldn’t access the resources from home while kids in other areas sitting the same GCSE will have already been taught the whole text.

Very happy with my Steelcase Please v2 from 2ndhd

Another vote for check out Khan Academy

Can you grow weed in our UK climate or would we be importing it? I’m not talking about Teds with lamps in their basements, but massive scale horticulture out in the fields.

UK is the world’s largest producer of medical cannabis, so yeh, it grows OK here haha

Fascinating stuff I assume quite large areas must have been cleared for farming and building work at the peak a few things spring to mind will the forest regenerate again once cleared this time round?or will it have been too massively raped & denuded. Will any of this put pressure on (any)government to change tack and preserve the forest you know for the global benefit

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/05/amazon-near-tipping-point-of-switching-from-rainforest-to-savannah-study

Really enjoying it. The cliff art is amazing and the discussion of the impacts of novel virus’s on the indigenous people seems all the more relatable now.

This thread convinced me to visit another supermarket from the usual aldi and Sainsburys. So went to Morrisons and can not believe how much better the beer selection is, I knew Sainsbury’s was bad but didn’t realise how much. Came away with a great selection and will definitely be going back before Christmas for more.

I really like the comnept but struggle with the lack of storage space, doens’t look like enough space for a weekly shop or say you wanted to hire one to/from an airport or train station, no space for two cabin bags

I use a couple of OnGuard locks as they are cheaper than the equivalent Kryptonites and Abus locks. They do have a reputation for seizing so just make sure you keep the lock and mechanism well lubricated.

The sort of live performance where the youtube comments are praising the sound engineer more than the band

I’d agree with this. With a 2 channel hifi set up, you’ll be getting ridiculously loud music/effects and quiet speech. It just doesn’t sound right…

I have Edifier 1700’s for my TV, so active speakers and don’t have any of these issues and really struggle to believe a similar priced soundbar could sound better

If you look at google trends, it is not at a fraction of the interest it was in 2017, most people aren’t even aware of the current price movement, last time it was on the BBC news in the final weeks before it hit the top, not to say it won’t drop but this isn’t like the last major peak quite yet but think a lot of people will look to cash out who bought way back then and been out of pocket for years

So, are initial stocks all going to USA, or spread more widely?

They have contracts with a number of countries. The EU has a very large order and offered us to join the procurement exercise but we declined stating we could secure a contract cheaper and faster….we are still negotiating….

Have a look at YNAB but sadly it isn’t free

Suggestion that David Frost might go as well, mind boggling
https://twitter.com/lisaocarroll/status/1326650740505534464

Twitter rumour mill is saying if he goes he will take a bunch of the other aides with him, which, like you say is just lovely in the current situation but guess that’s what you get having a non-party member as your top advisor