🌧

Glad that someone has finally taken responsibility for the appalling assault on democracy that was the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Slightly confused that it's the Director-General of the BBC, but what do I know?

But fantastic news you get to see Matt! Have a great evening!

@clairecopperman.bsky.social @katarazzi.bsky.social I think I need your expert help:

One of our quizzers is a Claudia Winkleman lookalike who was out at a Traitor's screening on Thursday night!

thursdayquiz.org/quiz-2025-11...

I have ground out a Supplemental Quiz:

thursdayquiz.org/quiz-2025-11...

Lots of travel - long journeys by football clubs, traitorous railways, and myths about the underground. As well as handy things to do with mushrooms; weyward sisters; baby owls; Gnarls Barkely; and crabs. Lots of crabs.

I want to be able to do `indexOf()` _within_ a substring without the hassle/performance hit of slicing; i.e.
```
String.prototype.indexOf = function(match,from,to){
for(let i = from; i < this.length; i++) {
if ( this.startsWith(match, i)) return i;
}
return -1
}
```

Me. I got left lead footed.

Javascript wish list: `String.prototype.indexOf()` has a stop position as well as a start position. *sigh*

(Although, knowing how V8 does `slice()` under the hood, it's probably a reasonable solution to search in a slice.)

Strong agree.

The cost of providing a train service (or bus service) don't depend strongly on the number of passengers onboard. And they're required to run these services. So they start out making a loss.

The game is to fill it with people who'll offset that loss - hopefully to the point it makes a profit.

So a charity bowl where people make a donation toward the cost (i.e. chose what they want to pay) is profit maximising?

Glad you're okay! I hope you had an enjoyable break and are suitably refreshed!

English pitfalls: cannon or canon?

(Thanks for letting me know, BTW.)

The scoring was done last night but I haven't written they into yet.

Thursday news quiz: errant flamingos, bottled messages and space nonsense Test yourself on topical news trivia, pop culture and general knowledge every Thursday. How will you fare?

Early Thursday quiz today, published 15 minutes ago !
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

As context to freeing of an Algerian man, here's some info about HMP Wandsworth, where he was:
• Built for 900 prisoners. Holds 1,600.
• Daily roster of prison officers c.70. Up to 15 staff on long-term sick leave.
• 36% of officers have >3yrs service.
• 12% of prison staff leave *each year*.

But where can we make further cuts to the budget? /sarcasm

So I'm reviewing a PR from a colleague that was written for like 95% by AI, and while it might have made his job easier, it's making mine a lot harder because it's riddled with mistakes and issues that I have to now fix, and I feel like I have to thoroughly check every single line of code twice

For November 5th, Russell Mael of Sparks clutching some fireworks to himself in a poster for 8/11/1975’s Fab 208 magazine. (On the mag’s cover, the dishy young Mr Mael was described as, shamelessly, “A Real Sparkler”.)

Thanks Andrew.

Yesterday, was obviously the day to make Orwell's spectre retch:

Your wish in my command:

The minimum wage was introduced at £3.60 in 1999. BoE inflation adjustor says that would be £6.94 today. However the current rate is £12.21. (×1.8)

More labour doesn't improve productivity (=output/person). Tech does. But it has a big upfront cost.

Decreasing the minimum wage decreases GDP so that's the numerator of productivity reduced. Increasing employment increases the denominator of productivity. Both act to reduce productivity.

If you're lucky, the extra hours compensate and we end up with no net change in productivity.

Latest @theguardian.com cartoon
#RachelReeves #Budget

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

My nieces and nephews could not comprehend how I could draw, how I was drawing something right in front of them. This sucks.

Starmer is supposed to be the conductor. And we're stuck with him and the chancellor. So our band is karaoke singers conducted by Eric Morecambe.

But we _can_ hire quality songwriters and ensure our leads have decent music.

(Britain's Eurovision entry is now a metaphor for our government. 😂)

Every C-derived object-orientated programming except, JAVA:
`new QueryProductDetailsParams(productList)`

But JAVA: `QueryProductDetailsParams.newBuilder().setProductList( productList ).build()`

🤦🤦🤦

(Okay, Javascript might do `QueryProductDetailsParams.from(productList)`, which I like.)

2nd line: "I will make the choices necessary to deliver strong foundations for our economy."

Orwell called that out in Politics and the English Language. You can't order up "strong foundations" from Amazon, and book a day off work to take delivery. So, sod charisma, she needs a speech writer.

Aghhh! My perfectionism is strangling the supplemental quiz, like it strangles everything.

Anyway, we need some joy, so here's the Egyptian foreign minister being given a Lego Pyramid by the Danish foreign minister.