thespaceinvader posted:

Wanna bet the person whose fire they returned was a cop hiding amongst the protestors?


He should have been.

At this point anyone who is calling the police on a black man in america is at the very best, shamefully, pitifully ignorant of the consequences of calling the police on a black man in america, and regardless, is arguably complicit in the consequences.

Manic_Misanthrope posted:

Relative to a lot of the world we are. Unfortunately.

OwlFancier posted:

I think if he tried that he might actually get couped, the money really would not like that.

Besides the army has plenty of jammers that can knock out wireless communications across a city if it needs to.

XMNN posted:

https://twitter.com/mboorstein/status/1267607428293636096?s=20

Regarde Aduck posted:

It seems to be one of the ideas that had even a little merit. Some people really need other people to feel alive. Others end up utterly worn out after social contact and want nothing more than to be alone with a book. And anecdotally there seems to be little middle ground.

communism bitch posted:

who needs to know how to say "bread" in Russian anyway.

XMNN posted:

glad I'm not the only one with moron bosses and coworkers who are trying to kill me

e: is there anything actually stopping parliament doing away with 90% of its members and then ending elections?

and don't say convention

quote:

Plot summary
In the future, the United States has converted to an "electronic democracy" where the computer Multivac selects a single person to answer a number of questions. Multivac will then use the answers and other data to determine what the results of an election would be, avoiding the need for an actual election to be held.

The story centers around Norman Muller of Bloomington, Indiana, the man chosen as "Voter of the Year" in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Although the law requires him to accept the dubious honour, he is not sure that he wants the responsibility of representing the entire electorate, worrying that the result will be unfavorable and he will be blamed.

However, after "voting", he is very proud that the citizens of the United States had, through him, "exercised once again their free, untrammeled franchise" – a statement that is somewhat ironic as the citizens did not actually get to vote; even he himself did not vote for any candidate, law, or issue.

The idea of a computer predicting whom the electorate would vote for instead of actually holding an election was probably inspired by the UNIVAC I's correct prediction of the result of the U.S. presidential election in 1952.

XMNN posted:

I did russian at school it was good, and the alphabet is similar enough to Latin/Greek that i found it no problem

I also did german which is obviously very easy vocab wise (and imo the vocab is usually going to be enough in practice, who cares if you conjugate your verbs right or forget what gender beer is)

did Arabic for a module in first year and the alphabet (or abugida or whatever it is e: abjad, according to Wikipedia) wasn't too bad, apart from the lack of vowels, vocab was mostly alien but I think I coped Ik, but I absolutely could not get my head around the right-to-left thing. also can't remember any grammar so clearly that didn't sink in at all

doing Japanese on Duolingo atm and the vocab is again very unfamiliar, and the orthography is like a cruel practical joke, but from reading around I think the grammar is probably surprisingly straightforward which should hopefully help if I ever get far enough to actually get into it

forkboy84 posted:

Trying to think of an example that catches me out. Любит is like but some times it's люблю and hosed if I can work out which should be used when.

goddamnedtwisto posted:

quote:

What question would you most like to ask England’s housing minister Chris Pincher? How about the chief executive of the Regulator of Social Housing, Fiona MacGregor or the chief land and development officer at Homes England, Stephen Kinsella?

All three are among an array of exciting speakers confirmed for Digital Housing Week, which runs from Monday 22 to Friday 26 June.

You submit your questions for them on Twitter at #digitalhousingweek and help drive the conversations on the day.

goddamnedtwisto posted:

I'll be the first person ever banned from Twitter for a meltdown over the Parker-Morris standards.

Miftan posted:

Huh, that's pretty close to the Hebrew word for egg - Bay-tzah. I wonder what the common root is there.

Guavanaut posted:

They both have a dual meaning as slang for testicles though. That's also common with Spanish and a bunch of other languages with unrelated eggwords, so maybe English is the weird one for not having eggs be common slang.

goddamnedtwisto posted:

I want to nail them to the door of every planning department in the country like a council house Martin Luther.

GLA (and some other authorities) now have (non-binding) standards that at first glance look like an improvement on Parker-Morris, but it's not just the outright area that most modern housing fails on (bearing in mind that these were supposed to be *minimums*), it's stuff like window sizes, sound insulation, in-built storage, division between kitchen and living room (a lot of developers combine them to make the living room seem bigger but of course it just means all your furniture ends up stinking of cooking, and also that you have no fire break between the kitchen and the rest of the dwelling), bathroom ventilation, and a thousand other little touches that vastly improve the quality of the living space.

While we're at it I'd also make appearance covenants punishable by death. Many poor-door units have specific clauses in their leases/tenancies forbidding the use of outdoor space for anything other than a very narrowly-defined set of uses, normally excluding any form of storage or clothes drying. That's right, you can be thrown out of your home for wanting to air out a towel rather than pissing away money (and carbon emissions) on using a tumble dryer, because they're terrified of the balconies not matching the architects drawings and maybe even forcing a member of the upper classes to gaze upon the underwear of the underclass.

thespaceinvader posted:

E: I'd love to see more non-cop whodunnits though - and not just the Miss Marple type ones, but like, more imaginative settings. Gimme a whodunnit set in like, ancient Rome, or prehistoric Africa, or on a pirate ship, or... etc.

OwlFancier posted:

Last year I nailed some bits of wood together and stapled some netting from boyes across it and it's probably the most productive use of a couple of hours in my life ever. I've had barely any wildlife incursions and have also barely closed my window for the past couple of months.

OwlFancier posted:

I am also crap at DIY which is why they're held together with four brackets and about six screws, half the staples wouldn't go all the way in, and the thing won't stay straight, but fortunately the window frame isn't square either so it still wedges in alright.

If I could be arsed I'd remake it with proper joints and better wood but even the mess it is is still night and day. God only knows why they aren't more common in the UK.

OwlFancier posted:

Are they the big buggers with the weird dangly proboscis? I admit I've never been quite clear how big they are. I always thought mosquitoes were like, midgie sized.

I definitely don't remember them past a couple of years ago either. Guess it's the weather. We're wet enough but maybe not hot enough normally.

Pablo Bluth posted:

There are less insects. It's all part of the massive ecosystem collapse that humans are responsible for. One German study found a 75% collapse in 26 years.

Prince John posted:

I had just finished reading this spectator article about how white, privileged, antifa are taking over the BLM protestors.

I was scoffing at it and then immediately stumbled across this video:

https://twitter.com/s_Allahverdi/status/1267240521052946432

In which a white person with a hammer is smashing up the pavement to pick up chunks to throw at the police, and the predominantly black protestors then promptly take him ("it's the white people!", "get the white people!") and then hand him over to the police.

Which makes me wonder is this actually a thing? Is there some supplanting of black voices in favour of peaceful protest going on in the US, or was it just a massive coincidence that I appeared to randomly land on a confirmatory tweet?

Debbie Does Dagon posted:

Just make sure you leave the craneflies alone, they're harmless.

quote:

Three absurdities here.

1. That two women can get married.

2. That one has the first name of Summer. Should first names not reflect the sex of the person. Imagine expecting a man to come to turn up as a blind date, and a woman arrives.

3. Can a woman change her focus of sdexual attraction just like that? How was the child conceived?

quote:

Encourage rough sleepers to move in with family and friends, government tells councils
NEWS
03/06/20
BY NATHANIEL BARKER
Rough sleepers given emergency accommodation during the coronavirus pandemic should be encouraged to move in with family and friends, the government has told councils.

etc

XMNN posted:

it's actually a good thing that they're not doing anything because that means the pandemic is over

Camrath posted:

Just cooked up the first batch of Apple Pie fudge. It’s amazing and now my house smells absolutely wonderful.

Just thought you guys would want to know

ThomasPaine posted:

You know of all the countries, I never would have guessed Sweden would be the one to go full blast for the insane herd immunity strategy

zhar posted:

It seems to get referenced a lot as one of the most progressive countries by some people and an SJW state by others. Is the government a bunch of lib dems or something?