Ah, the sweet smell of Tregret in the air...

Two things:

1. You seem to be ignoring the fact that there are subsidies for installing ASHP
2. You are also ignoring the fact that the UK is made up of four countries, and that the subsidies vary from country to country.

I live in a late Victorian house. When we moved in, there was no insulation. Couple this with the house being single glazed, and heating provided by 1970's storage heaters, and the house cost a fortune to keep warm. (I should also add that the majority of the lighting was still incandescent bulbs).

We replaced the single glazing by a mixture of double and triple glazing, insulated the walls and ceilings and installed an ASHP. All of this was supported by a mixture of grants and loans from the Scottish government.

My only complaint now is that despite the fact that Scotland is nearly self-sufficient in renewable energy, I still have to pay for electricity that is pegged to the gas price.

Specifically, Einstein's 1905 papers.

No, not the ones on special relativity, the one on Brownian motion.

Here in Europe, it would seem that avocados are half the price they are in the US (source)

Though I am slightly confused. After Vance's latest remarks, could someone tell me what the difference is between a "Chinese peasant" and an "American hillbilly"?

I see that the Heard and McDonald's islands have had tariffs imposed upon them.

The only inhabitants of these islands are penguins. This is obviously an attempt to suppress the use of Linux (whose mascot is a penguin) by the broligarchy in general, and Musk in particular...

Just because the US has won more prizes in the past, says nothing about how many it will win in the future.

If one was to make a prediction, one would hazard a guess that the current Trump policies on education will lead to poorer quality university education and research, with top quality researchers moving elsewhere (France inviting US scientists). Certainly, I think that many considering moving to the US for post-doc or higher positions will be re-examining the advisability of that move.

Would you want to work in the US if you worked in atmospheric physics, vaccine technology or "woke" science more generally?

I came across a couple of accusations about Einstein recently, one accused him of doing "Jewish", non-Aryan science, while the other accused him of doing "physical idealism" and not following dialectical materialist principles.

There's a government Signal group that is a bit leaky that could do with some help...

I understand that after today's security fuck up the Trump administration will be replacing Signal by Facebook.

There is a Politico article that argues that the real origin of the religious right in the US was desegregation.

The attacks on "Woke" and "DEI" are just the current versions of the same thing.

So what status did Sun Williamson have when she went up to the ISS? Qualified, competent, experienced

So, what status does she have now? How long before she gets slated as a "DEI hire"?

If it is just copy-paste, how long before we get a cdesign propentist moment?

I have worked in France, Germany and the Netherlands. In all of these, English is commonly taught in school.

The only thing that I would say is, try to use the local language. People will appreciate you trying, and help you out if you do, but get things wrong. Refusing to even try is guaranteed to exasperate the locals.

After last week's "meeting" between Trump, Vance and others with Zelenskyy, Trump has stopped all military aid to Ukraine.

Why? Is it just pettiness and spite because Trump didn't get his own way, or because Trump isn't POTUS but Putin's White House Asset. They aren't mutually exclusive of course.

Oh, and I saw a report this morning that the latest set of tariffs could cost the average American $2000 this year. Any signs of Tregret in the US as yet?

After the broadcast of the meeting of Trump and Vance with Zelensky, I think we are now certain of the characters of the two Americans.

One of the jaw-dropping comments from Vance:

Zelensky - you haven't been to my country you don't know what it's like.
JD Vaince - I've seen clips on tik tok. I know.