Yeah, I think they were thinking of a barrel-roll.

There’s no such law in the UK.

So you’re all for freedom of speech, but the moment someone exercises it you’d like them to up sticks to another country? Riiight. You sound unhinged.

I think hate can be self-destructive. If you’re going to punch a Nazi, do it from a place of love. But also, more power to your elbow.

You make a persuasive case that free speech, by your definition, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Why would you want to be hateful?!

Training, decent modern equipment, understanding and managing risk, gear redundancy, and wear a frickin’ helmet (esp. when belaying).

Yeah, there are some yahoos, but there’re also people who drop dead playing table-tennis.

With massive OOO pipelines, what’s the alternative?

Sounds like a really bad decision - forced error due to some other reason to back out rapidly. What an awful tragedy.

I was under the impression that Musk was going to “fix” Boeing’s delivery of AF1. I think his suggestions included relaxing the security clearance for new hires and getting everyone working 60-hour weeks.

News of that all went very quiet after the announcement though.

Okay.

Definitely a poor opinion then.

My concern isn’t for my own vote. It’s for everyone; there’s a pervading notion that voting is either irrelevant, useless, or a balancing act to find the least-worst option.

I don’t recognise the “listless wandering” you describe. It’s poetic but doesn’t reflect what’s actually going on here: people aren’t looking for entertainment; they are worried how they’re going to pay the bills. It would frankly be a relative utopia to have the privilege to not care about politics and what it’s doing to people.

I’d say “democratic” rather than “consumerist”; that’s a really odd choice of term (and a poor one I think). I live in a ward that’s solidly single-party in an FPTP system. Whether I vote or not is strictly irrelevant and always will be. There is no incentive for my representative to be anything other than a party cypher.

I’d rather see a PR system in place (STV by preference, but we’d probably end up with AMS so that party sinecures are still possible). For single-seat wards, I’d sooner have ranked-choice, because at the moment people have to thread a needle in order to attempt to stave off the headbanger candidates.

Mandatory voting I’d be less keen on unless it came with a “reopen nominations” but the issue with that is that that option would win by a landslide.

A solution to “people feel disempowered” isn’t “force them to express an opinion”. If turnout is low then give the lie to “my vote doesn’t matter”.

Choice-ranking systems aren’t hard to explain: “put these people in the order you prefer them”.

The anti-AV campaign had Cameron reading out an algorithm for the vote counting process in a dull voice and trying to establish: “yes well I went to Eton and although I am very clever I find this difficult”. The AV referendum failed in large part because it was a LibDem thing and people wanted to give Clegg a shoeing for going back on his election pledges. (That Clegg got outplayed by Cameron tells you everything you need to know about what a useless chancer he is.)

Just wish the Labour party in the UK would learn from this rather than triangulating with Farage’s fucking racist bullshit.

As someone watching from the other side of the world - is this another election victory that can be chalked up to Trump?

Time for Liz Truss to shine!!

What precisely is your interpretation of Falkner’s assertion that trans people should lobby for a “third place”?

He had a number of unchaperoned calls with Putin. I think it’s more likely that he’s acting in fear of an unpleasant death; sometimes direct credible threats work wonders.

Thousands separator.