Two English women are close to accomplishing the same feat.

https://www.seasthedayoceanrowing.com/

That’s a strong pun: seas the day.

That's kind of the plot of 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

I get a timeout message when I try to subscribe.

Hm, thanks for mentioning - will have a look. I added a subscription embed from mailchimp so need to look into why. Feel free to send an email to briefmix[at]gmail[dot]com and I'll add you manually!

Please do this.

As a long-time FT subscriber, I and others have noticed a very steep decline over the last year or so. Before, I didn't always agree with the comments, but they were usually at least somewhat insightful. Some readers suspect an organized incursion of state-sponsored malefactors. One certainly notices more of the bile on certain types of subjects (Russia, China, internet, US political system) than others.

> business and governance in the UK doesn't seem to be particularly corrupt.

Read any issue of Private Eye and you might form a different opinion.

The main reason Google provides money to Mozilla is to buy billions of search queries from them via default placement in the search bar. That's it.