railton

I get all my high end electronics through Argos as then I don't have to run the "is it fake" gauntlet with Amazon. Highly recommend.

Also in the UK - I've noticed a gradient in "aggression around cyclists", i.e. it's most awful in the south and gets progressively better the further north you go.

(I've never had issues when cycle touring in Scotland)

Have you read "The Water Knife" by Paolo Bacigalupi? Mostly set in Phoenix when the water has run out.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23209924-the-water-knife

Not "how I learn" per-se, but how I make time for learning (biggest problem for me, by far) is to do 30mins of $whatever before I turn on my work laptop, no excuses.

The book "Atomic Habits" mostly inspired this - the idea of setting both a clearly defined time and place for doing something + making it easier to do the right thing / harder to do the wrong thing. The "before laptop is turned on" is important for not drifting onto Slack and blasting through various notifications.

I've gone from spending literally years thinking "I really need to read more papers and these textbooks" to actually making solid progress on stuff I care about.

This is my experience too comparing UK and USA. I worked as a cleaner for some summer schools at university and only the American students (c.f. UK and Japanese students who were also there) treated me like I was complete trash. It was very eye opening.

Rebanks (author of this article) studied History, which I imagine has quite a different mix of people than e.g. engineering or one of the sciences.

I can't find out the college he attended, but I agree that college choice really can impact who you meet and the general "vibe".

My experience at Cambridge (similar path to you, Alex) is also at odds with this article.

I've read both and think English Pastoral is marginally better.

Less sheep, more general farming stuff and stronger narrative of old-school farming with his grandfather to modern industrialised then to present where he's doing more regenerative agriculture.

You can get a signed copy from his local Lake District bookshop btw: https://www.samreadbooks.co.uk/product/EnglishPastoral/2244

In the UK the majority of drivers who kill cyclists do not go to prison https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-28345522

It's a common bit of dark humour in the cycling community that if you want to get away with murder, make sure the victim is riding a bike at the time.

The comic "Three" does a good job of telling the story of Helots in Sparta.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20638282-three

He also points out in this post that rape was so common there's an entire, identifiable social class of Spartan bastards (_nothoi_ / _mothakes_).

> But we don’t need to guess or rely on comparative evidence, because this rape was happening frequently enough that it produced an identifiable social class. The one secure passage we have to this effect is from Xenophon, who notes that the Spartan army marching to war included a group he calls the nothoi – the bastards (Xen. Hell. 5.3.9). The phrase typically means – and here clearly means – boys born to slave mothers.

I've got another bit of anecdata like that - know a guy who never changed the plates on his French registered van.

Had the misfortune of going somewhere with him once and he was doing 80mph in a 50mph average speed camera bit of motorway - said the police never bother to chase up foreign plates so he just sped everywhere and never got a fine.

Sort of related is the story of a millionaire in Canada in the 1920s who bequeathed in his will a prize to whichever woman in Toronto could have the most babies in a 10 year period.

It went as well as you can imagine (lots of poor women having more children then they could support), followed by some lawsuits to make sure the "correct" women won the prize (e.g. not immigrants or people having children out of wedlock).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stork_Derby

It is also discussed in Act 2 of this episode of "This American Life": https://www.thisamericanlife.org/668/the-long-fuse

Blimey, you've made me realise that without knowing about and then going to a Facebook event of a not-great friend I never would have met my husband.

I agree that the low friction (and also low expectation) invites for Facebook events are a really great feature.