AllNewTypeFace

If the UK goes for the Russian approach of sending its undesirables and surplus population to the frontline with the cheapest possible equipment, essentially as ammunition, it could cost little. Though that only works if you have a frontline to throw them at.

Didn’t he fall out with the (state-aligned) church/criticise the Putin regime? If so, I wonder whether the “white substance” could have been played by the FSB. (IIRC, Karlovy Vary is crawling with Russian spooks.)

what’s that for people who don’t use Spotify?

TCF = Terminate and Catch Fire?

Which is another good argument for decentralising generation; lots of small- to medium-scale renewable generators distributed around the area in which power is consumed would require less transmission than a few huge generators (especially if they’re things people would rather not live near, like coal turbines or nuclear plants).

It’s slightly awkward then that virtually all the world’s wheelie bins are made in France

If the gold is in an accepted standard form, such as krugerrands, you just need to find a precious metals dealer. If it’s just a pile of gold, then there’s a lot of hassle. I imagine ingots of the sort national gold reserves hold would be somewhere in between.

Shifting a large quantity of gold may require a non-optional explanation of its provenance, with “I woke up and it was just there” or “a genie gave it to me after I did an online quiz” not being adequate, and an inadequate explanation resulting in its forfeiture if not more serious legal hassles. With a large pile of gold and no good explanation, you may be reduced to smurfing small pieces of it to different dealers, moving around a lot and avoiding the attention that such a pile would inevitably draw.

Did they say it was a “Mao-style bicycle” like the (old British-made) one Jeremy Corbyn was photographed on?

It seems like the sort of naive gimmick one might expect from a MAD Magazine cartoonist, or Elon Musk on a ketamine binge. It would work to an extent for a while, though whether the amount of electricity generated would justify the maintenance costs to keep it going is another matter.

The arguments against it are the power yield of a panel pointing upwards, and presumably covered with dirt shed by passing trains. That said, it would suffer less impact damage than photovoltaic roads/bike paths floated elsewhere (the occasional rock impact, as opposed to constant traffic). Also, there is a lot of track, so even if a segment generates little power, it adds up. Not enough to power electric trains, though possibly enough to offset the power bill after operating costs are taken into account.

I’m guessing this installation is an experiment to quantify these figures rather than a commitment to roll this out more broadly.

I like the colour; it gives it that dildo-of-consequences vibe.

If it wasn’t saddled with a crapsack kleptocracy, it’d be as pleasant a city as Helsinki.

Bit careless of Putin to leave a refinery lying around right near where he was holding his economic summit. You know how those things are these days…