Writing the pronunciation above a character is normal when the character is rare or has an unexpected pronunciation. For example recently 龘 was often written with the pinyin above.
Writing a different pronunciation with a different sense is also often seen on WeChat or in adverts. Often with a positive meaning in characters and a negative meaning in pinyin.
$0.0013 doesn't sound a lot. But it's equivalent to about $1.50 if somebody listens to an album 100 times.
That's less than if they were to sell the album in a shop. However they don't have the same distribution costs and Spotify users are almost always going to listen to far more music than they would if they bought CDs.
So while $0.0013 per stream sounds stupid, it's closer to a sensible level than one would intuitively think.
In Africa and the Middle East, the riots were heavily motivated - the rioters had strong political reasons to be there. In London, it's just some socially disaffected youths and looting opportunists. So I don't think they are all that comparable.
Well, they were in a big town and were told by the county council that there were no charge points remotely nearby. Whatever you think of Top Gear, that fact does not reflect well on electric cars.
The most popular crosswords in the UK are the same type as those in the US. But some newspapers have an additional 'cryptic' crossword. (I don't know more than a couple of people who actually do the cryptic crosswords, but I guess they must have some sort of following.)
But the people who do the Times cryptic everyday during their commute know they're in a different class... (e.g.: http://times-xwd-times.livejournal.com/731666.html ). I certainly can't make much of a dent in a cryptic crossword, though the 'concise' ones are sometimes doable.
Will knows when to be a pedant, and when it's necessary not to be a pedant in order to communicate more effectively. Some people don't know when not to be a pedant - I tend to be one of them - and it's interesting to see Will transcend that.
No, we call them crosswords. ("Cryptic crosswords" when it's necessary to distinguish them from the sort that's dominant in the US, and yes, that can be abbreviated to "cryptics", but that wouldn't be the norm.)
I'm guessing that the complaint was actually about "England" versus, say, "the United Kingdom".
Writing a different pronunciation with a different sense is also often seen on WeChat or in adverts. Often with a positive meaning in characters and a negative meaning in pinyin.