Yeah, these have saved us on a lot of issues I feel. It’s simply a much more representative system than what the Americans do and it helps keep a lot of fringe ideologies at the fringes, where they usually belong.

Minor correction, we have preferential voting not proportional.

I run a plant nursery and in my field it does work this way. When plants varieties are bred they can be protected like other IP, lasting 20 years to give the breeder a chance to realise the benefits of their work. This is conditional though, the protection is only valid as long as growers/the public have reasonable access to the variety. If this is not met the protection can be revoked and it becomes public domain again, so anybody can commercially propagate the variety. Glossing over a few details, but this is true here in Australia at least.

Key words being “current supply”. There are major moves being made to change this. Supply and demand need to grow at the same time if this is to work though.

Yep. It’s a bit hard to fathom today, but in the Middle Ages few people had the ability to read and write, mostly either learned monks and clergy, or those wealthy enough to be taught by them. With such a small pool of people, it’s comparatively easy to influence the prevailing spelling through the actions of a few.

Debt used to be spelled dette or simply det. We spell it with a useless silent “b” today because meddlers decided to bring it back to its Latin roots of debitum. This happened in French as well, even though neither language ever pronounced the “b” and had no business adding it. The same happened with words like doubt, plumber, subtle, indict, and island. French was sensible enough to reverse this through modern spelling reform, but I think English is stuck with it for the foreseeable future.

Yeah, it’s possible ≠ it’s likely

Our towns and cities are largely lacking the medium density mixed use neighbourhoods that make it nice to cycle. We can fix it, but it’s going to take time.

Exposure therapy works for this. You can still detect the chemical that made it taste that way, but the brain can rewire to perceive it as pleasant. If you’re serious about fixing the problem, start by adding small amounts to dishes and work your way up as your tolerance changes.

He posted about it on mastodon 7 days ago, so I don’t think it’s an old tweet. Maybe his personal website is just out of date? https://social.coop/@scottjenson/112468182058087636

Idk about everywhere else, but “sus” or “suss”has been common slang for “suspicious/suspect” in Australia, the UK and New Zealand for at least several decades.

I was told the other day that I have really nice skin for a man. The bit that surprised me was getting a compliment at all, not the qualifier.

We have options, just not good ones. After Starlink, the next best option where I live is 4G internet, which is way slower. Another satellite service or dialup are other options, both much worse than Starlink. We do not live in a remote location, just barely rural, and only a few kms from a town with gigabit fibre. Starlink is a fantastic service that has only gone down twice for us in the 7 months we’ve had it, and even then only briefly. I don’t think I can fully impress upon you just how much better it has made things.