Sorry for the absolute potato quality!

Looking for a UK pixelfed server. One choice.

Do any furries have naked molerat as their fursona?

Details here.

I have most of the big details sorted, but because I am going to be new in the country aside from a few family visits and one business trip, I have far from expert knowledge on living in the UK. I try to research as much as I can, but there are limits.

These questions are going to probably be subjective, and some may be dependent on where we're going to live in Britain long-term, something I can't tell you until I get a job, but I trust people on Lemmy more than some random Google search to tell me what they actually think.

So, here are my 20 questions- although some are really multipart questions- and I will probably end up asking more based on what I find out. I felt like 20 was an exhausting enough number. They are not in any particular order, I had about 8 and then I kept thinking of others and stopped trying to organize them. Please feel free to answer as many or as few as you like. Assume we won't be getting rich off of my salary, but also won't be living in a council flat.

1. Which mobile phone company would you recommend and why? Getting a UK phone number for both me and my daughter is going to be one of the very first things on my itinerary.
2. Obviously, I will need a place to put my money. I would rather go with a building society than a bank. Which would you recommend?
3. Which supermarket(s) would you recommend? Which should we avoid and why? Believe it or not, my daughter is happy to eat the cheap supermarket sushi they have in supermarkets here. Is that available there?
4. What should I think about when getting us a GP? I have health issues and need to get a National Insurance number as quickly as possible, but should I wait until we have a more permanent place to live? What are my options there?
5. My daughter is a 14-year-old neurodivergent lesbian who has no problem letting people know exactly what she thinks and also likes to go on long tangents about esoteric subjects that interest her, which makes it difficult enough for her to find friends in the U.S., but I have no idea how she's going to find friends in the UK. She will hopefully make some in school (it's sure as hell been hard for her here, and it's going to be hard on her there being foreign), but I'd love other suggestions on ways she might make friends in the UK that might not be a way in the U.S. She is super into Japanese stuff, but slightly off Japanese stuff, like obscure anime and electronica bands from the 1970s and 1980s, although she also loves punk rock and Hello Kitty 🤷. She also is a very talented artist and spends all day sketching in sketchbooks and on her iPad.
6. This is going to sound really stupid... do I just carry around my passport or how do I show ID if someone needs it? I'm not going to have a driving license.
7. What difficulties do you think I might encounter trying to rent a flat or house? I really don't know how the process works in Britain. In the U.S. they often do a credit check and you provide first and last month's rent, plus a security deposit. Utilities are not always included.
8. Once we get settled, is Ikea the best place to go to get furniture (I don't find what they have to be all that comfortable), or are the similar affordable options?
9. How about house wares? We care much more about utility over aesthetics, especially when getting established. I'd rather have cheap, durable plates and bowls and pots and pans than pretty, expensive ones.
10. And how about clothing? I do not care at all about fashion, I just want decent clothing that will look appropriate at a job. Obviously, I have plenty of that already, but it will need to be replaced eventually. Where do I go for cheap and durable over expensive and fashionable?
11. Are ISPs as dependent on where you live as they are here? We have very few options available and they are entirely geographically dependent. ISP recommendations would be great. I would especially love an ISP that didn't have data caps.
12. If I watch everything on a monitor via my computer, do I still need to pay a TV license fee or do I only need to play it if I want to use iPlayer? How does that all work? I definitely will not have an actual TV for a while.
13. My daughter's absolute favourite breakfast treat is going to a diner and getting corned beef hash. Is that a thing over there? Is there an okay breakfast place to take her to so she can have it once in a while?
14. I'm guessing this is a no, but if anyone knows of anywhere in the UK that serves decent Mexican food, even if it is just somewhere I can take her to as a weekend treat, please tell me. That is her absolute favourite kind of food in general. By "Mexican food," I mean "the shit they call Mexican food in America which isn't really Mexican food" (you might notice I'm not a fan), so you would have to be familiar with both in order to answer this.
15. I have been looking for a long time and I just haven't found anything good- does anyone know a video or series of videos I can show to my kid as a basic "life in the UK in the 2020s as a teen" primer? I try to tell her all that I can, but it's not like I can tell her what it's like to be a teen in the UK in 2025. I was last there as an adult in the 2000s, before she was even born, and Britain was already a noticeably different place from the last time I was there in the 1990s. I mean I know she's going to make a lot of cultural faux pas, but it would be nice to find a way to minimize them beyond me telling her things like what "pants" means in the UK and that "cunt" is not thought of in the UK as the horrific word it's considered to be in the U.S.
16. This is just something I've been wondering from job ads: when they say "casual dress," what do they mean? In the U.S. that means you can show up in a T-shirt and sweats. I don't want to make my own faux pas there.
17. If we end up having to move to Wales- I am interviewing for a job in Swansea this week- it's my understanding that my daughter will have to study Welsh in school. Does anyone have any experience moving to Wales with a teenager who is suddenly put into a (what I assume would be very remedial) Welsh language class? Any advice there?
18. I basically never carry cash on me in the U.S. at this point. What might I need to carry it for there or is it also unnecessary?
19. Do UK institutions care about your US credit rating?
20. I hate Marmite. Is that still a capital offence?

https://bsky.app/profile/themerl.bsky.social/post/3lfakq2l7nk2a

I promise this isn't an ad. I did this in Excel for 2023.

And why is it Fox's classic biscuit selection?

Today I was reading about a band I hadn't heard of (Republic of Loose) and thought the singer looked like someone I had seen in a music video for another band.

In this video, the actor in question is laying on his back with the ocean under him (as if filmed off the edge of a ship). I believe it was made recently.

This is Mick (Mik?) Pyro:

He doesn't totally look like the guy I'm trying to find but close enough to make me remember the video.

It is NOT Matt Berry. The actor I'm thinking of has short hair.

This is really stupid but when I first saw the video, I thought it was the guy from that old Hugh Mungus video:

What is the name of this actor?? It's driving me crazy!

Believe I've finished this (if anyones stuck on any clues am happy to help), but am just mystified as to how some of the clues are supposed to work..

34a A posh car taking carriers outside department store

_ A _ R _ D _

So for this I had "Harrods". So "department store". The "posh car" is rolls royce giving the RR. But I'm lost as to how the remaining letters on the outside (HAODS) are "carriers". It almost seems like a typo for HANDS, which would make sense, but obviously doesn't give Harrods, or anything else that makes sense

Help? An I missing something or is this a mistake by the setter?

I am, however, watching Death on the Nile on bbc 2

Thank you for keeping feddit.uk going. Ronnie, Myles and I wish you and yours Merry Christmas.

Now I have to hope to the god that is part of my new official state religion (do I need to have the local vicar over for tea when I move?) that someone over there hires me soon. Amazingly, people want to interview me.

The goal is to get the fuck out of America with my daughter before Trump is inaugurated. No specific plan of where to move, just wherever I get a job. We will move to the Falklands if we have to.

It feels so close now.

How do you shred a tyre on a mobility scooter?

So who's trying this first?

NPC reaction comic. panel 1: guy 1 says "Starmer didn't pledge to fix immigration". Panel 2: other guy replies "He pledged to fix the problems you blame on immigration". Panel 3: guy 1 is quiet. Panel 4: guy 1 is angry.

The names followed by the average asking price for a home and the average asking rent per month:

1. Woodbridge, East of England, £441,569, £1,478
2. Richmond upon Thames, London, £939,329, £3,131
3. Hexham, North East, £313,147, £840
4. Monmouth, Wales, £320,974, £1,335
5. Harrogate, Yorkshire and the Humber, £394,312, £1,439
6. Skipton, Yorkshire and the Humber, £263,479, £1,030
7. Sevenoaks, South East, £881,061, £2,924
8. Leigh on Sea, East of England, £465,542, £1,796
9. Cirencester, South West, £384,013, £1,495
10. Wokingham, South East, £590,949, £2,120
11. Winchester, South East, £578,760, £2,069
12. Stirling, Scotland, £214,441, £1,227
13. Stratford-upon- Avon, West Midlands, £413,115, £1,604
14. Horsham, South East, £458,641, £1,983
15. Kendal, North West, £285,645, £966
16. Kensington and Chelsea, London, £1,667,573, £5,345
17. Chorley, North West, £197,199, £883
18. Hove, South East, £555,193, £1,993
19. Wandsworth, London, £865,205, £3,159
20. Hitchin, East of England, £510,612, £1,730

Now this is the important information we need!

The tale of the tape:

• Quality Street - 600g, 66 chocs, +2
• Celebrations - 550g, 60 chocs, -5
• Roses - 550g, 51 chocs, -3
• Heroes - 550g, 59 chocs, +3

All retail at £6.

However, with Heroes there is a caveat:

With a total of 59 chocolates, this year’s tin marked a return to form with the mini versions of Twirl returning once again. For the last two years, the miniature chocolates were replaced altogether with two full-sized Twirl fingers due to disruption in its supply chain.

...

Last year's Heroes tin contained 56 chocolates - meaning it's the only one of the four to have upped its number this year, but, really, that is due to the fact that we had two full-size Twirl fingers last year instead.

So they replaced 2 full-size Twirls with 5 mini ones.

The conclusion:

If we’re going purely on tin size and the amount of chocolates inside, the clear winner in terms of value-for-money here has to be Quality Street as it has the most choice, the most contents and the biggest tin.

On the opposite side of the scale, Roses had the lowest amount of chocolates inside at 51 - but it didn’t have the least choice of flavours. Celebrations had the least choice with just eight different chocolates inside - but, in a redeeming factor, it did also have the second most chocolates inside (60).

However, you are probably going to go with the one that contains your favourite chocolates. Even if it's a present for someone else.