When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary, decaying city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he probes, the evidence begins to point to conspiracies far stranger, and more deadly, than anything he could have imagined. I didn't want this book to end. I wanted to play it like a video game. I wanted to dive deeper and deeper into its backstory. I craved a glossary, fan …
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I found a bunch of my old school-books that I wanted to digitally capture. I do have a flatbed scanner, but most of my 1980s workbooks were far too large for it. So I decided to build a cheap scanning table. Ingredients Old Phone Tripod - £8. White table Selfie-stick button! - £2 The Bluetooth selfie-stick button was necessary because tapping the screen on the phone made the somewhat-unstable tripod bounce around a bit. Not great for in-focus shots. It took a few attempts to find a s…
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Inspired by discussion around why society appears to deem people of colour as bad immigrants - job stealers, benefit scroungers, undeserving refugees - until, by winning Olympic races or baking good cakes, or being conscientious doctors, they cross over and become good immigrants, editor Nikesh Shukla has compiled a collection of essays that are poignant, challenging, angry, humorous, heartbreaking, polemic, weary and - most importantly - real. I don't know how to review this book. Some of …
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Sooner or later, death visits everyone. Before that, they meet Charlie. Charlie meets everyone - but only once. Sometimes he is sent as a courtesy, sometimes as a warning. Either way, this is going to be the most important meeting of your life. This reads almost like poetry. I absolutely adored Claire North's debut novel "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August" so I was keen to get cracking on this one. A superb and surreal tale of the Harbinger of Death who, naturally, works out of…
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(Long and data-filled post ahead!) I've switched to energy provider Bulb (£50 off if you join using that link). They offer a "peak time" electricity charge which looks like this: 23:00 to 07:00 = £0.0815/kWh 07:00 to 16:00 = £0.1235/kWh 16:00 to 19:00 = £0.3263/kWh 19:00 to 23:00 = £0.1235/kWh By contrast, the standard tariff is £0.1359 per kWh. That means my electricity is 2.4x more expensive for 4 hours per day, during peak time. But cheaper the rest of the time. Let's look at a typi…
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Every milestone of civilisation – from the end of slavery to the beginning of democracy – was once considered a utopian fantasy. New utopian ideas such as universal basic income and a fifteen-hour work week can become reality in our lifetime. A curious book this. It recounts all the actions which could have worked - but never quite comes to a conclusion about what should be done. It is almost identical to Hans Rosling's "Factfulness" in its rosy assessment of human progress in the last few…
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A quick chat with Rainey David all about the gender pay gap. Including top tips on how to value your worth to your employer. 🔊 💾 Download this audio file. Find out more at ThePayGap.com …
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I'm a sucker for weird veggie-friendly foods! I especially love discovering what other countries and cultures do to replicate their meaty dishes in veggie friendly formats. So I was delighted to find a local store to me selling all manner of Chinese meat-substitutes - including these amazing looking "Chicken" Drumsticks! I ordered a bunch and cooked them up. The "bone" sticking out of the end is bamboo. Chewable and sweet - but probably not for swallowing unless you really need extra…
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In the first collection of her evocative short fiction, Jemisin equally challenges and delights readers with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption. In these stories, Jemisin sharply examines modern society, infusing magic into the mundane, and drawing deft parallels in the fantasy realms of her imagination. The preface of this book unreasonably annoyed me. It rails against the unjust nature of contemporary publishing, throws around industry-insider terms…
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I'm going to let you in to three TOP SECRET rules for getting hired. These are the hidden techniques used by TOP interviewers… Never Tell The Candidates The Rules Of Success I read an infuriating blog post recently: "If someone doesn't send a thank you email, don't hire them". This is a great way to limit your talent pool. Personally, I've been hiring for a dozen years, and I've never received a thank-you email. So we can already show there is a cultural disparity here. Did you tell the c…
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The GNU Unifont project is amazing. It contains every Unicode glyph in one single file! I am going to argue that you should bundle it with your apps, your operating systems, and - at a pinch - your websites. The Unifont is a perfect fallback font. If your app or website uses a Unicode character which isn't supported on a device, the user will usually see � - a replacement character. If you include Unifont, they'll see the correct character. There are two downsides: The TTF font is 12MB. T…
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My pal Thea Cochrane is doing brilliant things with the British Library Sound Archive 🔊 💾 Download this audio file. You can follow along @BLSoundHeritage. 🎧 Stick this Podcast Feed into your podcatcher. 🍏 Subscribe on iTunes. 🎵 Intro music "Gran Vals" performed by Brian Streckfus. ⏱ Stopwatch Icon by Ilsur Aptukov from The Noun Project. 🄯 This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. …
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