Interesting Links for 25-12-2025
Dec. 25th, 2025 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- 1. The 2025 Headline of the Year Nominees
- (tags:headline funny journalism )
- 2. There's no such thing as a fake feather
- (tags:birds materials video )
- 3. Dutch Tesla Fleet Goes Bankrupt After Betting on Musk's Self-Driving Promises
- (tags:Tesla automation fraud ElonMusk )
- 4. Super Mario Bros. and Yoshi Games' Affordance of Childlike Wonder and Reduced Burnout Risk in Young Adults
- (tags:psychology mentalhealth games Mario )
- 5. Why Britain doesn't have enough dentists
- (tags:teeth UK bureaucracy OhForFucksSake )
Tags:
- automation,
- birds,
- bureaucracy,
- elonmusk,
- fraud,
- funny,
- games,
- headline,
- journalism,
- links,
- mario,
- materials,
- mentalhealth,
- ohforfuckssake,
- psychology,
- teeth,
- tesla,
- uk,
- video
Update on my medical woes
Dec. 23rd, 2025 07:35 pmandrewduckerI called them back at 7:00. Got through to someone helpful who has given me the location of a pharmacy that we're going to visit first thing tomorrow morning, who have been instructed to help us.
No idea why that didn't happen the first time!
No idea why that didn't happen the first time!
A sudden withdrawal
Dec. 23rd, 2025 12:34 pmandrewduckerI am an idiot who forgot my blood pressure medicine when I came down to Devon to see my parents.
So this morning I went in to the local pharmacy. Who can't help me because NHS England and NHS Scotland are two different organisations. But they told me to call NHS 111 and ask them for help.
NHS 111 said "We don't have anyone available who can prescribe, call us back after 6:30PM, or talk to a local GP as "Unregistered or Temporary Residents". So we went in to my dad's GP and they said "We don't help in that situation, go talk to NHS 111, they'll help you." - which would seem to leave me in an endless loop.
Just in case, I called my GP surgery in Scotland, who said that they can't prescribe in England.
At which point, as nobody is considering this very important, I think about the only options are to either call back after 6:30 tonight or to just do without for a week. Which, having checked online, doesn't look like a great idea.
Edit: I called them back at 7:00. Got through to someone helpful who has given me the location of a pharmacy that we're going to visit first thing tomorrow morning, who have been instructed to help us.
No idea why that didn't happen the first time!
So this morning I went in to the local pharmacy. Who can't help me because NHS England and NHS Scotland are two different organisations. But they told me to call NHS 111 and ask them for help.
NHS 111 said "We don't have anyone available who can prescribe, call us back after 6:30PM, or talk to a local GP as "Unregistered or Temporary Residents". So we went in to my dad's GP and they said "We don't help in that situation, go talk to NHS 111, they'll help you." - which would seem to leave me in an endless loop.
Just in case, I called my GP surgery in Scotland, who said that they can't prescribe in England.
At which point, as nobody is considering this very important, I think about the only options are to either call back after 6:30 tonight or to just do without for a week. Which, having checked online, doesn't look like a great idea.
Edit: I called them back at 7:00. Got through to someone helpful who has given me the location of a pharmacy that we're going to visit first thing tomorrow morning, who have been instructed to help us.
No idea why that didn't happen the first time!
Interesting Links for 23-12-2025
Dec. 23rd, 2025 12:00 pmTags:
- ai,
- buses,
- disinformation,
- doom,
- edinburgh,
- fraud,
- links,
- scotland,
- socialmedia,
- transport
Interesting Links for 22-12-2025
Dec. 22nd, 2025 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. Trail hunting to be banned under new animal welfare push
- (tags:foxes uk law )
- 2. Grid-Scale Bubble Batteries Will Soon Be Everywhere
- (tags:batteries electricty co2 )
- 3. Childhood Friends, Not Moms, Shape Attachment Styles Most
- (tags:relationships friends parents psychology )
- 4. Why British Jews are experiencing their biggest change in 60 years
- (tags:Jews UK Israel bigotry demographics )
- 5. Exceptional adults reach peak performance gradually with broader, multidisciplinary practice.
- (tags:learning development education )
Tags:
- batteries,
- bigotry,
- co2,
- demographics,
- development,
- education,
- electricty,
- foxes,
- friends,
- israel,
- jews,
- law,
- learning,
- links,
- parents,
- psychology,
- relationships,
- uk
Interesting Links for 21-12-2025
Dec. 21st, 2025 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. Transgender kids change their minds only 6% of the time
- (tags:LGBT transgender children psychology )
- 2. A train-sized tunnel is now carrying electricity under South London
- (tags:electricity infrastructure tunnels London UK )
- 3. AI Chatbots Are Poisoning Research Archives With Fake Citations
- (tags:AI research doom OhForFucksSake )
- 4. Italian bears living near villages have evolved to be smaller and less aggressive
- (tags:bears evolution )
- 5. Santa Claus is still a woman
- (tags:presents christmas women patriarchy society )
Tags:
- ai,
- bears,
- children,
- christmas,
- doom,
- electricity,
- evolution,
- infrastructure,
- lgbt,
- links,
- london,
- ohforfuckssake,
- patriarchy,
- presents,
- psychology,
- research,
- society,
- transgender,
- tunnels,
- uk,
- women
Posting from the abyssal depths
Dec. 21st, 2025 10:59 amandrewducker7 days ago was our earliest sunset (15:37)
7 days from now is our latest sunrise (08:44)
Today is our shortest day (6:57:37)
I am looking forward to the return of the light.
7 days from now is our latest sunrise (08:44)
Today is our shortest day (6:57:37)
I am looking forward to the return of the light.
What does AI think of my Hacker News profile?
Dec. 20th, 2025 08:16 pmandrewduckerSomeone set up a bot to process a year's worth of Hacker News submissions/comments and generate an amusing summary, complete with a personalised XKCD. And, frankly, it did a great job.
"The Legacy Defender General"
(If you're on HN, and the site hasn't been melted down from demand yet, you can get your own here.)
"The Legacy Defender General"
A seasoned architect who spends their days patrolling the wall between actual engineering and unsustainable AI hype while desperately trying to keep their Windows 10 box alive until the heat death of the universe.
You are the only person on the internet who still remembers what a build script does and why we shouldn't let LLMs touch them without adult supervision.
Roasts
🔥 You have the energy of a man who would rather spend four hours debugging a custom Git hook than thirty seconds clicking a button in a GUI.
🔥 Your posting history is just a very long, very polite scream into the void about how AI is basically just Accenture in a trench coat.
🔥 I haven't seen someone this committed to public transport and vertical taskbars since the last time a Linux kernel developer got stuck in an elevator.
Predictions 2026
🔮 The Great Migration - You will finally buy a Steam Cube after your Windows 10 machine starts emitting a high-pitched whistle every time you open a browser tab.
🔮 AI Realization - You'll post a 4,000-word manifesto titled 'I Told You So' after an LLM successfully deletes a production database using a build script it 'hallucinated' was optimized.
🔮 Local Hero - You will be appointed the unofficial 'Minister of Trams' for Edinburgh after submitting your 100th link about geoblocking and public transport network maps.
🔮 Rust Awakening - You will successfully convince a junior developer that Rust is 'woke' but only because it respects the personal space of memory addresses.
(If you're on HN, and the site hasn't been melted down from demand yet, you can get your own here.)
Interesting Links for 20-12-2025
Dec. 20th, 2025 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. The British Medical Association comes out for trans rights
- (tags:LGBT doctors UK GoodNews transgender )
- 2. Transphobe Allison Bailey loses her case against Stonewall - again
- (tags:bigotry law UK GoodNews transgender LGBT )
- 3. Fairytale of New York but all the lyrics are 'it was christmas eve babe'
- (tags:music funny video christmas )
- 4. Merry Skealmas everybody!
- (tags:games funny music )
A long awaited victory
Dec. 20th, 2025 09:31 amandrewducker9 years ago I bought Bloodborne as one of my first Playstation games.
I was rubbish at it.
I'd play for a bit, get stuck on Father Gascoigne, go play something else, come back two years later, repeat.
Today, having not played Bloodborne for months, I thought I'd give the fight a few goes through, to warm up on the game again. It took me at least ten minutes of wandering about to remember what the buttons did.
And then I beat him first time, without it even feeling that hard.
I made mistakes, I nearly died twice, and I'm not sure I *deserved* the win, but for the first time he felt clumsy, and like he was giving me space to breathe, and I wasn't panicking all the way through the fight.
And now I get to play the other 90% of Bloodborne.
(I'm now trembling quite a lot, as my adrenaline levels drop back to a reasonable level. If you'd like to see what the fight looks like, for someone rather better than me, here's an example).
I was rubbish at it.
I'd play for a bit, get stuck on Father Gascoigne, go play something else, come back two years later, repeat.
Today, having not played Bloodborne for months, I thought I'd give the fight a few goes through, to warm up on the game again. It took me at least ten minutes of wandering about to remember what the buttons did.
And then I beat him first time, without it even feeling that hard.
I made mistakes, I nearly died twice, and I'm not sure I *deserved* the win, but for the first time he felt clumsy, and like he was giving me space to breathe, and I wasn't panicking all the way through the fight.
And now I get to play the other 90% of Bloodborne.
(I'm now trembling quite a lot, as my adrenaline levels drop back to a reasonable level. If you'd like to see what the fight looks like, for someone rather better than me, here's an example).
Interesting Links for 19-12-2025
Dec. 19th, 2025 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. Combining over 650 "Greatest Comic Book" lists to find the critical consensus on the 200 Greatest Comics of All Time
- (tags:viaLinkMachineGo comics recommendation )
- 2. Jury trial reforms: How did the court backlog get so bad?
- (tags:uk law austerity )
- 3. Facebook tests £9.99 monthly subscription for sharing more than two links
- (tags:facebook business )
- 4. Heart and Kidney Diseases, plus Type 2 Diabetes, May Be One Illness
- (tags:heart disease diabetes )
- 5. Christian couple who believe homosexuality is 'wrong' blocked from fostering children (case went to the high court)
- (tags:bigotry adoption LGBT UK religion )
- 6. 2025 in polls
- (tags:uk polls politics )
- 7. £100 UK contactless card limit to be lifted from March
- (tags:uk money Technology )
- 8. YouTube bans two popular channels that created fake AI movie trailers
- (tags:youtube ai trailers fraud )
- 9. How Dinosaurs Thrived in the Snow
- (tags:dinosaurs snow weather cold )
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Interesting Links for 18-12-2025
Dec. 18th, 2025 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. Why Do Commercial Spaces Sit Vacant?
- (tags:business property finance economics banking )
- 2. What Happens When Netflix Buys Warner Bros. (nothing good)
- (tags:netflix movies history WarnerBrothers video doom )
- 3. UK energy costs likely to halve by 2050, says system operator
- (tags:UK renewables electricity thefuture )
- 4. Teachers to be trained to spot early signs of misogyny in boys
- (tags:misogyny UK children boys )
- 5. One month to go: Edinburgh-Fife rail upgrades begin soon (closing the line for a week)
- (tags:Scotland transport trains )
- 6. Pumped Hydro Energy Storage Is Having a Renaissance
- (tags:hydroelectric electricity storage )
Interesting Links for 17-12-2025
Dec. 17th, 2025 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. Trans scholars being pushed out of academia, researchers warn
- (tags:transgender bigotry LGBT UK academia OhForFucksSake )
- 2. Scottish Trans and LGBT Youth Scotland response to Scottish Government consultation on updating school buildings regulations
- (tags:school transgender consultation Scotland )
- 3. Magic mushroom compound psilocybin found to break depression spiral
- (tags:depression psilocybin psychedelics )
- 4. Creepy McDonalds AI Actor Responds To Backlash
- (tags:ai advertising actors copyright video )
- 5. The official Fallout season 1 recap is filled with AI and thinks the show is set in the 1950s
- (tags:Amazon AI misinformation )
- 6. Police Scotland warn mental health call-outs are unsustainable
- (tags:police Scotland mentalhealth )
- 7. Tesla Robotaxis crash 12x as often as humans
- (tags:automation driving Tesla )
Tags:
Interesting Links for 16-12-2025
Dec. 16th, 2025 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. Vocabulary Test: How Many English Words Do You Know? (I scored 21,900, above 92% of native speakers)
- (tags:language quiz )
- 2. I'm Kenyan. I Don't Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me.
- (tags:kenya english language ai style )
- 3. The giant heat pumps designed to warm whole districts (in Germany. UK is miles behind)
- (tags:heating Technology germany )
- 4. Hungary is leading the world in solar adoption (25% of its electricity is solar)
- (tags:solarpower hungary europe )
Interesting Links for 15-12-2025
Dec. 15th, 2025 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. Flat-pack washing machine for people without an electricity connection
- (tags:washing design clothes )
- 2. 5D glass storage 'memory crystals' promise up to 13.8 billion years of data storage resilience, which is roughly the age of the universe — crams 360 terabytes into 5-inch glass disc with femtosecond laser
- (tags:storage Technology )
- 3. 'Throw the parcel at the door' - Evri couriers cutting corners to earn a decent wage
- (tags:delivery uk OhForFucksSake )
- 4. Last Call for Mass Market Paperbacks
- (tags:viaJamesNicoll books publishing history )
Tags: