skies of couple-colour

lancelot was very literally raised in a lake

gawain has a talking fox sidekick who shows him how to cross the river of the dead

morgan le fay’s best frenemy/gf is an ancient greek oracle who slept with alexander the great

gawain has to investigate his own murder not once but THREE times because people just will not stop faking his death

arthur has a pet parrot

one time mordred ate a dead body

gawain said he wanted to be turned into a maiden to be able to love lancelot as a maiden could. he was very high on painkillers at the time

lancelot’s birth name is galahad and his son’s name is galahad and his ex-boyfriend’s name is galehaut and his grandfather’s name is lancelot and his uncle’s name is bors and his cousin’s name is also bors.

there are upwards of ten characters named yvain

gawain was kidnapped by pirates as a child. this explains a lot about him i think

Designed by the Fire Brigade's in-house architect, Peter J Smith, built in 1992. I would normally dislike many of its' individual features (blue window frames? No, thank you), but as a whole it's totally whimsical.

and my research brought me to (gross photos warning!) Kismai's post on the very topic. apparently this stuff is called "scrud," and it's basically a residue that forms over time inside the nooks and crannies of a washing machine - leftover detergent reacting with mineral traces in tapwater to form a buildup that also traps dyes, grease, and other dirt, which bacteria then feeds on, because it wasn't already gross enough. it forms faster if you have hard water, use too much detergent (which most people do), use fabric softener, wash only on cold and the list goes on and on - point is, scrud is the reason that you have to actually clean your washing machine, or be super fastidious about how you do laundry.

(I'll take "things I wish school/my parents actually taught me" for 800)

it turns out that laundry sucks significantly less when your clothes and sheets and etc actually come out of the machine looking, feeling, and smelling clean, rather than looking, feeling, and smelling like despair dipped in slime

(e.g., *apparently most Japanese washing machines don't do hot water settings so laundry detergent manufacturers like Kao have patented liquids with 'anti-mite' properties using jasmonoid compounds to compensate for the lack of > 60°C temps which would normally kill said mites)

most generic supermarket bio powder detergents seem to have lipase enzymes based on performance. however ingredients list for Tesco, Sainsbury's, Waitrose etc. only specify 'enzymes' which is soooooo unhelpful. still, Aldi & Lidl are confirmed to contain lipase

Ecover & Ariel bio detergents are also generally recommended

most UK areas have abysmally hard water so getting limescale prevention tablets, though not essential, may help with performance

I use dissolved citric acid in water (active ingredient in stuff like the USA's Downy Rinse) in the rinse compartment rather than vinegar or fabric conditioner. laundry detergents are formulated to work in slightly alkaline conditions & citric acid helps to neutralise lingering detergent at the end. I believe you can find citric acid at DIY & household shops or on ebay? food-grade or not doesn't matter.

liquid scent boosters are water-based AFAIK and thus OK to replace fabric conditioner, but I don't use them so don't know much!

They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can't survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.

Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.

You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn't like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.

This article specifically notes:

For journalism, activism, or domestic abuse situations, skip Windows and use Linux routed through Tor instead of a commercial VPN. A GDID doesn’t care which VPN you use, only that it’s still the same Windows installation.

Other important quotes:

What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows “surveillance software”.

Two things back that up:

There’s no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Apple’s advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Android’s works the same way. GDID has neither, and a Windows reinstall only gets you a new number Microsoft can still get back to the same account.

Then there’s activation. Massgrave, the group behind Microsoft Activation Scripts, notes that Windows setup sends hardware info to Microsoft and gets identifiers back, the same tokens later used for Store access and licensing: “It’s impossible to prevent Windows from getting a GDID without breaking activation and UWP app[s].” Anyone who lost a license after swapping a motherboard has already met a smaller version of this.

Here's the complaint filed to the court, the primary source for the case mentioned in the article. You can find mentions of GDID on page 30 of the document or 34 of the PDF.

I also made a PDF version!!

For comprehensive deets, tomshardware explains

Audio: A recording of Leonard Nimoy reading it on Internet Archive.

Text: A PDF version.