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I think that was downstream to deal with the fact the real toy was expensive and hard to get due to demand.

IIRC it was Blue Peter's most requested instructions ever.

Quite a signficant public service by whoever designed that when you think about it.


The original instructions are online!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/classic/bluepeter/makes/tracyisla...

Via https://www.bbc.com/videos/c511wey54g4o ("1993: Tracy Island - Blue Peter")

The next video in the archive is about "this new thing called the Internet", from 1994 https://www.bbc.com/videos/czv20818q2no


Does any money laundering offence not have a mens rea, though? You typically have to have at least suspected that you were dealing with the proceeds of crime.


Structuring (splitting up cash deposits to a bank so that they don't trigger the bank to file a CTR) comes to mind. It does have a mens rea component, but the money being entirely clean doesn't make the act not-structuring, IIUC.


The Post Office is not the government.


It is wholly owned by and accountable to the UK Government, so this is at best a partial truth.


> Ukrainian refugees I know are finding the same things in the UK school system, where the maths is much less advanced.

This doesn't appear to be reflected in PISA scores (489 UK, 441 Ukraine)


Maybe because UK education system knows about this PISA and Ukraine and other countries don't even care?

For example one thing that puzzles me in western education is this reading comprehension. What exactly is this for? I studied in Russian school/university and we had nothing like that.

Reading means you should understand what you are reading, reading without comprehension is just nonsense for me.


I am Spanish. We call it text analysis and it is quit common at all levels in school and university.


So what exactly is it supposed to teach/train? If I understand meaning of individual words in the text I just put them together and I understand it. If its relatively complex topic I would sit and think about it.


It teach you resources for text construction.

The different meanings of a word relative to its semantic enviroment.

When, how, and why to use all the different time vebrs.

How to understand and use figures of speech.

And it gives you tools to analyze all of that.

People dont do that in Ukranian?


First of all I must say that I can only speak about Russian schooling, Ukranian is probably similar but I can't be sure about it.

> resources for text construction Not sure I understand this, there are words in a given language, you put them together and you have your text.

> The different meanings of a word relative to its semantic enviroment. I agree that some words may have multiple meanings, but this again sounds to me like a language skill, be able to understand what exactly each word means in a context. Not sure how this is different for reading or speaking.

> When, how, and why to use all the different time vebrs. This is an interesting one, I guess in Russian (I assume its similar in Ukranian) we don't have many complex time forms, I know in English and Spanish there are like 10 or more.

Somehow we only studied language and literature and did some exercises related to reading and understanding text, but it is not a whole separate subject.

In each school class kids are supposed to read books and learn from them, just like that.


> Sweden might extradite him to the US, but the UK wouldnt

An excuse that was always made zero sense.

It later emerged that at the time of the Swedish investigation, there was no indictment from the US.


And you do not think, that would have changed the minute, he was in jail in sweden?


> but the UK wouldnt

The UK routinely extradites people to the US (and facilitated extraordinary renditions from UK soil). The claim he could not leave the UK for fear of being extradited to the US was always a nonsensical lie.


I did not comment on that. But it seems he was right that he was in fact not extradited to the US after all while being in the UK.

(there was no claim that the UK does not extradict to the US in general, but in this specific case they might not)


> it seems he was right that he was in fact not extradited to the US after all while being in the UK

He is on his way to US soil right now and will appear in US territory before a US judge, he has been extradited.


"the only reason he is not "extradited" is he is surrendering himself."

He was already in prison. Usually you do not let people go out to let them extradict themself.

It is a weird comprimise to put an end to this farce.


It is perfectly normal - If the judge orders the person's extradition, he must remand the person in custody or on bail pending the extradition. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK.

In reality he is not "free" till the judge slaps their hammer down.


No, I don't think that would have changed, because the decision making of the Obama administration and DOJ at the time is now known.


No more than if he was in the UK.


It seems like it's a bit like "home soil" which has cultural connotations.

I can't think of an exact single word in English for the translation but I imagine every large country has the concept of regional cuisines and farming traditions feeding into a regional identity

British people often point out that other languages don't really have a word for "fair play" but it's not like these cultures don't understand and respect the importance of integrity, respect, justice etc.

In general this don't-have-a-word-for thing is massively overplayed (hygge probably the worst example). We're all the same species of ape.


> Why is our labor becoming worth less in real goods?

I don't think this has been true in general for a while, although it was true 2021-2022[0].

It may of course be true for you, I don't know your income!

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-i...


I just picked a random political article to which I have no significant connection[0]; I don't notice "a lot of bias"...?

For me Wikipedia is consistently amongst the least biased sources on the internet.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Labour_Party


Compare the first paragraphs of these two articles. Remember that Wikipedia is supposed to be neutral

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gamergate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_(harassment_campaign...


This isn't "anything remotely political" is it, it's a highly contentious culture war issue among the chronically online. I was disputing the claim actually made, not a different claim you appear to have understood I was making.

For what it's worth, I agree with that KYM's opening paragraph is better and less-biased than Wikipedia's.


I consider the culture war a political issue but I'm glad you can see the obvious bias in the wiki article.


Yes it's a political issue, but the user I originally replied to claimed that bias was obvious on _anything_ political.


But... It was a misogynistic harassment campaign. Some maybe well-meaning useful idiots also hitched their horse to it (and most have not even been tarnished by it), but that was the main thrust of that adventure.

Is Wikipedia supposed to describe World War II as a 'small disagreement over national borders and ethnic purity', lest it be accused of partiality? A spade's a spade, a war's a war, a harassment campaign is... A harassment campaign.


The KYM article mentions the harassment but is less editorialized.

"The term has also since been used to describe the group of internet users, based mainly on Twitter, who claim that there is a lack of transparency within the video game journalism industry. These same people have also been criticized of practicing misogyny and sexism by many, through harassment and trolling, referring to their opposition as social justice warriors."

Compare that to the indignation dripping from the wiki paragraph.


If you have no significant connection to it, how would you know if it's biased or not?


In some wikipedia clones, it's pretty obvious:

https://www.conservapedia.com/Video_games


Their significance in public life was been almost completely replaced by Wikipedia, though


Here in Denmark we have an online lexicon which is managed by (barely paid) scientists and experts. For every article you can see which scientist was involved in making it, what expert is responsible for the area etc. https://denstoredanske.lex.dk/


Wikipedia articles are not consumed like traditional encyclopedias anyway. I would say that encyclopedias became much less relevant in general, but being one of the first influencial online encyclopedias, Wikipedia came to be used as a volatile source of information even though it didn't strive to be one.


We used them for further research or quick look up of facts you should know. That seems to be how people use Wikipedia.


That's how people should use Wikipedia, but people generally don't do so in my understanding.


How do they use it then?


We used to copy articles out of them for homework. The more things change…


As a meager pedestrian, I consume Wikipedia instead of Encyclopedias - that I sometimes did when I was a kid


Idk if it was the first. Microsoft encarta was a pretty big player in that space back in the day.


Was Encarta ever released online? I only remember the CD-ROM version.


Yes, i think starting around 1999 so quite a bit after the cdrom releases. Admittedly that is only 2 years before wikipedia.


But not among the paying clientele.


It's not expensive compared to what games used to cost.


When I bought a $60 game in 1996, I knew it was a complete product. It might have a bug that made it impossible to finish, but returns are a solved problem. I knew I had a product that was made, possibly incompetently, for fun, or to tell a story.

I wasn't buying something that was trying to nudge me into spending another $400 on different pixel colors, or worse, different characters, abilities, or effects.

Modern video games have adopted techniques used by the gambling industry to trigger essentially addiction, because game companies prefer 3 whales to a thousand happy individuals buying the game a single time and playing it forever happily.

Because they were not satisfied with making a million dollars off a video game. That wasn't enough money.


You used to be able to buy games used for a tiny fraction of the original price, and you used to be able to sell games you finished or didn't like. Now you have to pay the full price, every time, irreversibly.


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