988 Photos and videos
We may not be the best at anything anymore, but we do make the best plug socket in the world 🇬🇧⚡
#UK #Britain #British
Your phone charger can electrocute a toddler who pokes a fork into the socket. The British plug cannot. That difference comes from a 1947 engineering project that refused every shortcut and turned a household plug into one of the most deliberately safe objects ever mass-produced.
Britain published BS 1363 in 1947, built for the post-war housing boom. The country was wiring millions of new homes at once and needed one standard that would work safely for everyone. They picked the most paranoid option available.
The earth pin (the large top prong) is longer than the other two. When you push a British plug in, the earth pin goes in first. Inside the socket, it presses a lever that opens two metal shutters covering the live and neutral slots. A fork pushed into an empty British socket hits only shutters. The shutters block it.
The two conducting pins are also coated in plastic for their lower half. A plug halfway out of the wall is still safe to touch. You would have to pull it completely clear before any live metal is exposed.
Inside every plug is its own fuse. UK homes wire their sockets in a loop called a ring circuit, which runs at 32 amps, enough to melt a lamp's cord if the cord fails. So each plug carries a fuse matched to the appliance: 3 amps for a lamp, 13 for a kettle. When something goes wrong in your appliance's wiring, only that plug's fuse blows.
The standard US plug (flat two-pin or three-pin) has none of the pin coating and no individual fuse. American building codes began requiring shuttered outlets in new construction in 2008, decades after Britain made shutters standard. Even those newer shuttered versions lack pin coating and plug-level fuses.
Britain's plug is bulky because a fuse, a shutter mechanism, insulated pins, and three contact prongs all need room. The plug looks the way it does because safety engineers refused to sacrifice any of those features to make it smaller, and that decision is now 79 years old.
36
I'm not a huge fan of Starmer, but if Russia is targeting him then he must be doing something right.
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8r2…
6
Jun 14
People should pay tax on the unimproved value of their home. This means houses are cheaper, but are enjoyed for their use-value, not as an economically inert form of investment.
Besides, under the Georgist single-tax system, a bottle of 16-year-old Lagavulin would cost about £12, so noone would care how much tax they were paying in any case.
8
This is quite depressing
Got rather into researching my ancestry after a dna kit a few years ago. Turns out I come from undistinguished peasant stock. Never bothered me until my mother recently got a pedigree fox terrier puppy and I found out you can trace the dog's ancestry further back than my own.
64
US: 5.76 homicides per 100k people in 2023
statista.com/statistics/1374…
UK (England & Wales): approx. 0.86 per 100k for year ending March 2025
ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationa…
Ratio: US rate is roughly 5–6.7x higher depending on the exact years compared.
Also, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_ca…
1
2
399
If @Tesco excludes strawberries on a technicality, they should include bananas on that same technicality. Or, even better, just remove the technicalities (given that the offer has no additional qualifiers).
Jun 9
Someone on r/LegalAdviceUK has beef with Tesco for not counting bananas as berries
43
Fascinating! @FryRsquared - the invention of Jaywalking.
youtube.com/shorts/6W_s3VPMd…
22
Max retweeted
May 26
🟠 Amber heat‑health alerts have been extended until Thursday 28 May and now include the South West, alongside the South East and central England. Check in on vulnerable people and know what to do if someone becomes unwell in the heat.
ALT Amber alert for the East Midlands, East of England, London, West Midlands, South East and South West. Yellow alert for North East, North West and Yorkshire and The Humber.
16
44
64
37,272
Max retweeted
May 25
We’re calling it: The war in Ukraine has entered a new phase.
@KatStepanenko and I have authored a new special report studying how Ukraine is actively challenging the positional character of the war that has dominated the battlefield since 2023.
Data on Russia’s battlefield performance indicates that the character of the war is shifting in favor of Ukrainian forces – at least for now. Russian forces rates of advances are stagnating while Ukrainian forces are employing novel tactics and operational concepts in efforts to break out of positional warfare. Neither Russia nor Ukraine can conduct operational maneuvers yet, however.
The bottom line is that the war in Ukraine is competitive and far from stalemated. Ukrainian forces are out-innovating Russian forces in both military technologies and in applying these new technologies in effective operational concepts that can help Ukrainian forces break out of positional warfare. Ukraine is employing mechanized equipment in tactical maneuvers in ways that were impossible 12 months ago. Russia’s ability to conduct infiltration missions will likely continue to degrade as Ukraine’s intermediate-range strike campaign pushes Russia’s logistics and forward operating bases further away from the frontlines, reducing resourcing to sustain infantry tasked with infiltration missions. Ukraine may be able to scale these effects if they resourced properly by international partners.
Ukraine’s advantage in intermediate range strikes is notably not permanent, and Russia will very likely eventually develop countermeasures to mitigate Ukraine’s advantages. Ukraine’s international partners thus have a rare and temporary opportunity to help Ukraine exploit favorable battlefield dynamics while Ukraine has the upper hand.
Key Points of the report:
• Russia’s rate of advance is plummeting during the Russian Spring-Summer 2026 offensive.
• Russia is losing more soldiers to make fewer gains, with monthly Russian casualty rates reportedly outpacing monthly recruitment since December 2025.
• Ukraine is starting to regain more ground than it is losing for the first time since 2023.
• Ukraine’ recent counterattacks feature unique characteristics and deviate from key trends that defined the positional character of the war since 2023.
• Ukraine is conducting a pattern of more frequent mechanized counterattacks at the tactical level for the first time since 2023.
• The Ukrainian command’s operational planning is maturing.
• Ukraine’s early 2026 counterattacks in the south were successful likely due to better planning and preparation of the battlefield.
• Ukraine has been conducting a coherent campaign to suppress and destroy Russian air defenses since late 2025, in order to shape the battlefield as part of more sophisticated campaign planning.
• Ukraine significantly intensified its intermediate-range strike campaign against dynamic targets in Spring 2026 in order to degrade Russian logistics at operational depths ahead of planned Ukrainian maneuver.
• Ukrainian forces started actively disrupting Russian railway logistics in occupied Ukraine and Russian western regions in Spring 2026.
• Ukrainian intermediate-range strikes are already achieving notable operational effects, including degrading Russia's ability to use the key Russian highway connecting Russia to occupied Crimea and GLOCs around Donetsk City.
• Ukrainian forces decisively seized the initiative in intermediate-range strikes by fielding new technologies such as the US-made Hornet strike UAV, among other systems.
• Ukrainian forces are achieving temporary tactical drone overmatch in some frontline sectors, which is slowing Russian offensive operations by degrading the effectiveness of Russian shaping operations.
• Ukrainian forces likely achieved tactical drone overmatch in certain frontline sectors after degrading Russia’s drone capabilities in late 2025 to early 2026 - primarily by suppressing drone launch positions and increasingly intercepting Russian tactical UAVs.
• Ukraine’s degradation of Russian forces at operational depth combined with tactical-level drone overmatch likely is creating vulnerabilities in the Russian lines.
• Ukraine’s intermediate-range strike campaign is likely far from its zenith, assuming continued support from Ukraine’s partners, and will likely intensify over 2026 as Ukraine fields new weapons capable of striking Russian’s operational rear.
Link to full report: understandingwar.org/researc…
170
1,720
6,851
912,845
Max retweeted
May 21
If the farmer could make more money rearing beef than leasing the land for solar, he would be doing that.
You should be asking why it is less profitable to grow food than it is to generate power, instead of blaming farmers trying to maximise returns from their land.
It’s still a lot better than selling the land to developers who would destroy it forever.
7
2
55
1,241
Max retweeted
May 22
1
1
56
Trump’s OGE Form 278-T shows Dell Technologies ($DELL) stock purchases starting 10th February, 2026, totaling over $5M. On 8th May, he urged Americans to “buy a Dell” at a White House event without mentioning his holdings. Dell shares surged ~12% that day on AI server demand.
1
64
Max retweeted
May 12
Trump has insisted again and again that foreign countries pay tariffs, not US businesses and consumers. But when he wants to try to lower prices, what does he do? He lowers tariffs, because they raise prices for US businesses and consumers.
May 11
SCOOP: Trump will suspend tariff-rate quotas on beef, lowering levies as part of larger affordability push today.
Exec orders also lower protections for wolves, ease rules on cattle ear tags and aim to increase rancher access to capital.
@PatThomas1318 and me
7
36
94
10,181
The British Army taking "paramedics" literally.
#hantavirus
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgz…
1
1
93