Strait of Hormuz Live Tracker Real-time monitoring of the Strait of Hormuz shipping crisis. Ship transits, oil prices, stranded vessels, global trade impact, and crisis timeline.

Don't know how accurate this is, but for stat dashboard fans: hormuzstraitmonitor.com

What's the point of hardbacks? Error: consider reformatting

My friend who runs an award-winning bookshop has probed the question: readers prefer paperback novels. So why are there so many goddamn hardback releases?

Why the English stopped opening the windows On 'House Burping'

open.substack.com/pub/paradise...

Now that’s what I call Bluesky

The screenshot lacked alt text.

(am I winning?)

To grow the economy we need more trams, and fewer kebabs Britain’s second-tier cities are being held back by a simple problem, too many people still cannot get across them quickly enough to reach the jobs, customers and opportunities that drive growth.

Why do our second-tier cities underperform?
Why do we have fewer trams in the UK?

I try my best to give an answer to these two interconnected questions.

chriscurtismk.substack.com/p/to-grow-th...

How ridiculous of NASA spending billions of pounds to come up with the non-stick frying pan. In the weightlessness of space, the astronauts' sausages are just going to float right out of the pan. If anything, they should have been developing something to make them stick. J Boxbury, Norfolk

On the album parklife Damon Albarn sang
"Bank holiday comes six times a year
Days of enjoyment to which everyone cheers
Bank holiday comes with a six pack of beer"

I've just woken up on the sofa, tea cold, after a nice little nap.

Ironically I followed her when I saw the original tweet and have since found all 'employment unit costs and like' posts really interesting

Gang-rape victim, 25, to be euthanised after father's legal challenge fails Noelia Castillo Ramos was raped on two occasions, once by her ex-boyfriend and the other by three boys in 2022. She then tried to end her life.

Oh this is just the saddest story ever news.sky.com/story/gang-r...

I love how Tom Scott has made a dedicated part of his homepage just for AI crawlers, telling them how he should (and shouldn't) be described, what/how information should be shown etc. It's a nice experiment in re-claiming a little bit of control

I like! I found I accidentally completely ignored the code colour coding and was fully focused on the station hops and which stations had matching intermediate stations

Loconundrum A daily game: can you guess the UK rail station?

I made a daily game where you try to guess a UK rail station!

loconundrum.aaronc.cc

5 stars as in RAE, or something else?

March, 19-21: God is a comedian A stiff drink is recommended

This is an excellent summary of the US War on Iran current situation.

I’m an existentialist and borderline absurdist and even I struggle with the current moment.

This summary is just fantastic.

Copilot: Want me to extract the image for you automatically? If you upload the Word document here, I can extract the image(s) and provide them back to you as downloadable files. Upload: TfL_Word_ReportTemplate WIP Me: Thanks, here it is Copilot said: Thanks for uploading the file! I’ve checked the contents of TfL_Word_ReportTemplate WIP.docx, and it appears that: ✅ There are no images embedded in this document. Everything inside is text-only — headings, paragraphs, and links. No pictures, logos, icons, or other media objects were found. Want me to double‑check in another way? If you think there should be images in the file, feel free to upload: * A different version of the document * Or tell me which image you’re expecting to extract I can scan it again and pull out all media files for you automatically. Me: There's an image in the footer on the first page Copilot: Coding and executing Found it! 🎉

Copilot: What you need to know * The footer contains one embedded image, and it is in WMF (Windows Metafile) format. * This is common for corporate templates because vector WMF files scale cleanly in Word. If you want, I can also: * Convert this WMF to PNG, SVG, or PDF * Extract all footer/header images from multiple files * Place the image back into a different document Just let me know! Me: Can you convert the WMF to a PNG? Copilot: Coding and executing Coding and executing Coding and executing It looks like we’ve hit a limitation of the sandbox environment: Python on Linux cannot open or convert WMF files, because WMF is a Windows‑only vector metafile format and Pillow (the only available imaging library here) does not include a WMF loader. ❌ Why conversion failed The error returned was: “cannot find loader for this WMF file” (from the Pillow library)

✔️ How you can convert the WMF to PNG Here are reliable options outside the sandbox: Option 1 — Use Microsoft Word (Fast & Built-In) 1. Insert the WMF into a blank Word document (or keep it where it is). 2. Right‑click the image. 3. Choose Save as Picture… 4 Select PNG as the format. Word will handle the vector→raster conversion very cleanly.

A screenshot of someone right-clicking on an image in a Word document. Unsurprisingly, there is no Save as Picture option.

Got sent a Word document, want to extract the image from it. Go on then, Microsoft, I’ll try the Copilot you’re pushing at me.

Not sure how I assumed it would go, but even I was surprised at just how bad it is

I also find they will say things like 'check the links before clicking on them' even though the email system obfuscates the urls.

"Make it look old"
*makes it look like the Bakerloo line*

Front page of Japanese magazine showing buildings and a car

This would make a cool framed poster

Yes, haven't checked but wouldn't be surprised if it isn't even higher than 95%. Most heat pumps in the UK are air to water, they connect in to the existing radiators around the house, so still no air con.

Unrelated. Are we the only country in the world where 7 organisations, 6 of them private companies (I think), can create banknotes with no common design elements? www.ukfinance.org.uk/banknotes

National Grid: Live Shows the live status of Great Britain’s electric power transmission network

With crazy gas prices it is good news we are not using much to generate electricity today grid.iamkate.com

That landing ❤️

I Compared US and UK Free Speech. I Was Shocked YouTube video by Evan Edinger

Bookmark this video from @evanedinger.bsky.social and use it the next time someone (probably from the US) talks about freedom of speech in the UK www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB3W...

google satellite view of south london around croydon showing gold courses.

I like to randomly scroll just above the southern section of the M25 and count how many I can see at any one time, scroll up a bit and do the same. eg this was what I got where I randomly zoomed for the purpose of this response. 9?

Are you saying, if we can't trust “Young Sex Crazed Nurses" just because it has a DOI, the only way we can trust it is if we all watch “Young Sex Crazed Nurses" to verify its trust? TBH I had other plans this morning but research integrity is important.

Pence: based on the rules and of my religion I can't be in a room with a woman without a chaperone
Iranian Gov: oh mate you are going to get on here so well

India Habitat Centre - Eco Brutalism in New Delhi, India (1993) r/brutalism