BASIC allowed many kids to get started in programming.
In secondary (high) school in the UK in the early 80s, one autumn a few kids came in for the new term in sports cars (cheap and old, like MGs and Spitfires).
It turned out they had sold ZX Spectrum games to a publisher and bought the cars with the money.

With apologies for the link to X...

https://twitter.com/JeffMightB...

I was watching Harry Potter with my 7 year old, and he became scared of Dobbie the House Elf(?)

Don't worry, I said, elves don't exist. They're just in this film.

But what about Santa's elves, he replied.

I had to row back pretty quickly on that one!

In general, I think that children stop believing in Santa sooner than we think, but they play along with us, because they think that if they stop believing in Santa then the presents might stop too!

Probably still is

Exactly! Isn't it just super-duper Predictive Text?

Commit crime in other areas :-) .

I work in the Finance industry and we have to take 10 consecutive business days once a year. Your account/phone etc., are locked, and you cannot log in. If there is an emergency and you need to log in, it's a very serious issue. The theory is that, if you were doing anything "naughty", 10 days should be enough for that to collapse around you in a big stinking mess, We call this the Leeson Law...

More than 8 out of 10 Indian restaurants in the UK are owned and run by Bangladeshis (fun fact).

"autonomous semi"

Fnarr.

I always thought it's not a sport if you can smoke or drink beer while doing it. Then it's a pastime.

So, darts - definitely not a sport. Cricket - a sport at higher levels than I play :-)

.

"Ostracism"
- signed A Word Nerd

.

Builders and bookies* use £50 notes

* betting shops

I remember back in the day a friend of mine in the Communist Party Of Great Britain* told me that his job "come the revolution" was to pop out and cut down some telephone wires.

* not the Communist Party Of Britain, those splitters

Or read mostly the 1-3 star reviews, and a couple of 4-5s.
Filter out the 1-3 star reviews which you don't care about, and you should get a good picture of the company.
For example, for a hotel, if someone rates it 1* because of breakfast, I can ignore that because that's not the most important part of a hotel stay for me.

"Each plant would produce 440 megawatts of electricity -- roughly enough to power Sheffield"

We've only got one Sheffield, why do we need 16 power plants?