Quite a bit of rain

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With Cape Town allegedly desperate for rain (except we’re only comparing the dam levels this year with those from last year which followed the wettest winter on record), Cape Town is going to get some rain.

Quite a bit of rain.

Time to light the fire, grab some red wine, slow cook a beef casserole and hide under a duvet.

Not all at the same time, obviously. Incredibly foolish idea. Mess everywhere.

But it is probably best to just check that your gutters are all clear in tomorrow’s balmy 19oC before Friday hits.

This isn’t the first big storm of the season: it’s not even a proper cold front. But actually, the lack of wind (8kph SW) does mean that once the rain arrives, it’s not going to go away very quickly, and thus will keep falling on the same bit of South Africa (Cape Town) all day.

Edit: It is. Forecast updated. Wet and windy.

Don’t say that you weren’t warned.

Time to regret

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This is what pushed them over the edge. An AI depiction of Trump as Jesus Christ.

Not the illegal ICE kidnappings and separation of families. Not the state-sanctioned murders of America citizens. Not the everyday corruption and insider trading. Not the Venezuela incursion. Not the repeated late night social media rants of a demented despot. Not the rising petrol price. Not the constant BS at the press conferences. Not the nonsense of the tariffs and the cost to American people. Not the demolition of the East Wing of the White House. Not the insidious slide towards dictatorship. Not the desperate pandering to Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu. Not the war on Iran. Not the bombing of the girls’ school and the deaths of 120 schoolchildren. Not the 38,000 times he’s mentioned in the Epstein Files.

Nope.

It was the fact that he published that image above that upset them.

And that really is all you need to know about Trump’s supporters.

Estonia’s coastline

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More stats for your next pub quiz.

Estonia’s coastline: It’s extremely long, given the area of the country.

Estonia is nowhere near as big as:
1) Romania
2) Poland
3) Iran
4) Namibia
5) Saudi Arabia or
6) Algeria

but because of its crinkly outline and many islands, it has a ridiculously large coastline.

Some of it freezes over, as well.

You could add South Africa to that list above, too. An area 27x that of Estonia, but a coastline just 74% the length of the Baltic state’s.

And South Africa has a lot of coastline. The whole of the bottom of a continent’s worth.
I’ve seen at least some of it.

It’s worth remembering that while none of those big countries above are surrounded by water, neither is Estonia, with borders with Russia and Latvia, and a long (not countable for these purposes) coastline along Lake Peipus.

What a stat.

Paris loos

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If there are 9 million bicycles in Beijing (and I’m assured that there are), then there must be almost that many public toilets in Paris.

Seriously:

There are 8.34 public toilets in every square kilometre of Paris.

And like a question about the titles of Alfred Hitchcock movies, this is bound to come up in a pub quiz near you at some point. So remember it.

France in general has a lot of public loos.

Why? Well, there are some good reasons:

French municipalities take a proactive, centralized approach to providing sanitation facilities, considering them essential street furniture and a human right for residents, elderly, and visitors.

And some… er… less good ones:

The proliferation of toilets, including automated toilets and older-style urinals, aims to combat the prevalent issue of public urination, especially in high-density areas.

Nice.

Still, everyone (in France) benefits from the number of local loos, so perhaps it doesn’t really matter why they’re there. Visitors to Paris are 70x times more likely to be able to find a public toilet than someone visiting Ljubljana.

Meanwhile:

As of April 2026, the City of Cape Town, in partnership with the Cape Town Central City Improvement District (CCID) and Streetscapes, operates a targeted public toilet initiative in the CBD, offering nine high-usage mobile toilets.

Nine! (not nine million).

Still far better than Slovenia, mind.