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Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

One thing I didn't appreciate until too late when moving out of the UK post-Brexit was quite how unusually densely packed the Cambridge geek circles are; seeing this username again, yours as well I think, fanf of course, and honestly half the people who used to go to The Carlton before the fire…

I was expecting it to be that easy to surround myself with similar people here, but apparently not.

Still, should be seeing Calamarain next weekend.

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I did jury duty at the Crown Court a few years ago, and met a Debian maintainer and MSR researcher over the course of a week. And far more oddly, I met a friend of one of the Dasher developers who saw me using it to reply to some mail because my keyboard had broken.

In a jury lounge with around fifty randomly selected strangers this doesn't seem probable, and I can't imagine a similar outcome if I'd been at Bedford(which I think is the next closest crown court).

I'm more accepting of bumping in to fellow travellers at the curry house or pub, because we're choosing to go where others suggest. Still, Cambridge is joyously weird.

Note to self: Probably should have used the jury duty downtime to meet some interesting "normal" people though.

> one of the Dasher developers

If either the dev or the friend arrived by unicycle, I probably know them…

There are definitely other circles of people round the world, but they generally don’t have that same element of, “you can turn up at this place on this evening and probably meet somebody you want to talk to.”

I think it’s an intrinsic thing with British pub culture, the same can be applied to various genres of literature, game design, films, and so many other things.

Me too. (I miss the Carlton.)

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