They’re about to drop the indie-folk album of the year

Also, water is wet

It’s a lot easier if you’re a totalitarian one-party state.

Barrier troops have been a thing in this war as well. Typically Kadyrov’s “Instagram corps” with their shiny new kit have been the final barrier, safely at the rear.

But still no Taurus missiles

Because they’re famously expensive to keep?

“yank” sounds seriously old-fashioned, like something from the Crocodile Dundee era.

It makes some sense. Australia is not that unlike the US: there’s a lot of geographical spread, people more or less speak the same language, much of it is car-centric so you won’t have to get used to walking/cycling everywhere as you might in Europe, plus there’s a more or less functioning state healthcare system and much fewer guns in the hands of the general public. On the downside, the wildlife wants to kill you, and the locals will call you a “bloody seppo bastard” (rhyming slang for American, from “septic tank”/“yank”), though sometimes affectionately.

It’s not the degree itself, it’s the debt you incurred to get it, and your consequent lack of negotiating power.

No, it’s a scam, whose only purpose is to keep people flying when they may otherwise feel concerned about the consequences of doing so. A bit like plastic recycling.

It’s comforting to think that they’re all bots. The uncomfortable truth is that there’s a type of guy who made idolising Musk as the Visionary Techno-Genius his entire personality, and some of them are still around and posting.

In Australia, it’s now called the Rinehart Effect.

I wonder who will provide the technology. Will they go with China (theoretically fraternal comrades in socialism, though geopolitically Vietnam might want to limit China’s power over it), Japan, South Korea or a European supplier.

Either this only happened to the FOAF of someone interviewed on FoxNews, or if it did, it was a false-flag operation organised by Turning Point or some similar group to radicalise young men against feminism and consent culture, as anyone who gave it a moment’s thought would see that that would be its outcome.

They’ll need to define new sins. They proposed practical ones, with carbon taxes and the like, but the big sinners are far too powerful and well-connected, so it’ll have to be something smaller like mobile games or flavoured coffee.

Didn’t most of the disaster queers decamp en masse to BlueSky?

Mastodon still has the Star Trek dads, retired bloomscrolling posters, retrocomputing hobbyists, very earnest preachers/tubthumpers and those too autistic to have a concept of clout. As long as there’s a critical mass to sustain this self-contained rhizome of communities, it’ll quietly keep going.

So, in Japan they’d complain about how loud and talkative the Finns are?

On what grounds will it be struck down? The only constitutional rights recognised by the courts are the right to not have a state religion imposed on you and (as of 1991 or so) freedom of political association.

References to Poland in the context of Russian wars do sound like ominous foreshadowing. At least there’s nothing called “Suwalki Gap”, “Berlin Ring Road” or “Finnish Sniper”