Zompist Bboard Again

You don't understand. Boris with fight on! and fight on! and GET THE JOB DONE that 14 million voters elected him to do! Mere resignations from his cabinet won't distract him from his Ordained Destiny! Don't you read the Daily Express?

They're just backsliders! Replace them with some Proper Conservatives™who can Support Boris and Get The Job Done!!!

I'm not sure anyone has outlined the following scary scenario: the Supreme Court decides that state legislatures can overturn elections; they do so in 2024 in a few states but don't have to because they get an electoral college victory anyway; they can then freely steal the 2028 election because el...

The name "ʇeʇ" on the map made me wonder if the page was rotated 180 degrees somehow. Then I wondered if it was "ʇəʇ" and Zomp was experimenting with an orthography which meant something completely different upside-down. Of course none of this is true, but it might start giving p...

(succinct and informative as ever; exactly what I was wanting!) More worryingly: where do you think it's going? All-out civil war and a split into two or more mutually hostile new countries? Realistically, more of what we have now: a division into liberal blue states and ultraconservative red state...

It's not a particularly original question, but how the hell did your country get to this? In a rhetorical sense, of course; there's no need for masses of specific detail.

More worryingly: where do you think it's going? All-out civil war and a split into two or more mutually hostile new countries?

Raphael wrote: ↑Sat Jul 02, 2022 1:23 pm Why are sour drinks and things to eat more refreshing when it's hot than less sour drinks and things to eat? What makes sour things so refreshing?

Here you go

First, there's the very real possibility that the current situation will lead to the nuclear annihilation of humankind Then we're dead, and quickly, and have nothing more to worry about. <sarcasm level="high"> Have you ever actually been dead? Do you know how relentlessly, mind-numbingly,...

Do any of you know any history books covering a long period in history that try to intentionally avoid the common thing where history books take the more pages per period the closer they get to the present? Like, say, a book covering a thousand year period that would have a thousand pages and dedic...

Agreed. Also being depressed in and of itself can make everything seem much more hopeless than it really is. It's a vicious cycle so I hope you can find some things to get your mind off these mattes, Malloc, and find something that might help with your depressive condition. Even if I agree things a...

In America, I hear people were recently lamenting a decline in the social value of "hard work" when lots of poor workers left their jobs because they felt they weren't being adequately compensated. Not just in America; we hear the same thing here. I've heard that here for many years now, ...

Where did /ʧ/ come from, aside from devoicing of word-final /ʤ/?

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Jun 07, 2022 4:32 pm I thought it was the Habsburgs who had the screwed-up jaws.

And in a wonderful example of the Oneness of Person and Universe, somebody once told me that the reason that European Spanish has /θ/ was "because the Habsburgs all had hare lips".

Of course, it's worth establishing what "minimal grammatical complexity" actually is and what it looks like.

"Social Democrat" in the UK tends to be associated with the SDP, David Owen, and the Gang of Four, which makes it somewhat anachronistic.

bradrn wrote: ↑Mon May 23, 2022 9:48 am

Raphael wrote: ↑Mon May 23, 2022 9:45 am Now that's weird.

Why? Two years is too short, four years is too long. Three years is just right.

It makes sense if you turn it upside-down, then Aussie "3" becomes Northern Hemisphere "5". Well, sort of.

Vangelis is dead.

What is a kestrel? It's a bird, of course, but what kind of bird? To most people it's one of these , but in two separate instances - in the glossary at the end of the Rogue vade mecum , and in a fantasy novel I read many years ago - it appears to be a seabird, which in the second instance flies in f...

Raphael wrote: ↑Thu May 05, 2022 1:36 pmCasting your vote by making a mark that can be removed with a simple eraser seems risky to me.

Removing someone's vote like that is known as tampering with ballots, and we don't do it here.

I went to vote today, and I was allowed to keep the pencil I was given to mark the ballot paper!