Not just cyclists, but yes. The males become very protective of their offspring in breeding season.

A lot of aus cyclists go as far as to tie zip ties on their helmets such that the tails stick out like bird spikes when the right time of year hits.

I feel like I’m the exact opposite of what this article proposed however the entire thing confuses me.

I’m not rich but relatively well off, and, without doubt in the best financial position of my immediate group of friends.

If I happen to be the one that picks up the bill I often have people chasing me to pay me. I actually think that is a problem because they feel obliged to do the right thing, however I’m unmotivated because I don’t care about the outcome – I don’t need the money. This is my fault and I feel poorly for it but the reality is that after I’ve had a nice evening I don’t really care. In terms of the debt: honestly I probably wouldn’t bother asking.

The very concept of asking someone for 4 bucks seems abhorrent to me. To be clear, I say this personally; I’m not struggling to pay rent/mortgage/utilities/whatever. If you’re in a position where those are concerns then please absolutely follow up.

Chasing a $4 debt won’t make you rich, ever. Even if you do it all the time. Anyone well off chasing this kind of cash is deluding themselves.

Generally speaking my friends and I operate over a long term fairness principle. “Bob got the last round, I’ll get the next”; they won’t be even but our assumption is that it’ll balance in the long term. That applies to more than just the pub.

At the cost of leg room.

So, uh, a modern (not US) prison cell?

I’d prefer they make it fatter if the battery would last more than a day as consequence.

This book helped me out significantly:

https://www.saltfatacidheat.com/

A former treasurer of Australia solved it. You just need to get a good job.

Yes.

Legitimate question: is there no benefit to voting for a party if they won’t win?

Do they get any future election funding or… anything?

I used Netscape “back in the day”. With some interim transition attempts including the likes of Opera, I eventually switched to Chrome because it was genuinely more featureful and faster.

I was a happy Chrome user until they decided to deprecate manifest V2 and fuck up my ad blocker, at which point I switched to Firefox and haven’t looked back.

Everything in this industry is circular I guess.

I realise the US uses FPTP, but can someone explain to me why this comment is being downvoted? I’d think participating in the democratic process would be considered a good thing regardless.

Raising tax revenue and funding some variation of single payer health care or socialised medicine are not mutually exclusive.

My problem is with the influence that a hostile foreign state actor has with TikTok.

Google is an independent company; I’m 99% certain their motivation is to make money and I’m confident their algorithms are tailored purely for engagement and profit. Whilst I’m sure they have some back room deals with US intelligence organisations I suspect that it’s a case of providing data vs providing influence (though I would not rule it out).

TikTok is controlled by the Chinese government. That’s not up for debate; if you have an entity in China it has to work that way. Imagine the damage they could do if they actively decided to increase, for example, messages of reunification with Taiwan in their algorithm by just 1% on a global scale. That frightens me and I’m not convinced it isn’t happening already on specific topics of concern to China’s foreign policy.

And that’s putting aside the amount of data that the Chinese are getting without even exerting any influence. They can likely discern worldwide sentiment on a range of topics and adjust political posture accordingly.

I’m not saying Google is perfect. I hate social media in general for the way it’s warping the zeitgeist. But I personally consider TikTok to be a huge threat to the world.

I have never understood curling to this day. I’m still not sure I do but I’d like to thank you for this amazing explanation.

“They all looked like Silicon Valley startups,”

This hits too close to home.

I used to deliver a keynote to 3-400 people, twice a month as part of corporate onboarding.

Absolutely this.

Obviously my experience was not as high stakes as a SOTU, but it was fucking exhausting. I knew the content well enough that I could deliver it in my sleep and actively did so when I was sick, hungover, generally tired and (usually) just okay.

Regardless of my initial state, I was at my tether after 90 minutes of being “switched on” and engaged. I am not an octogenarian.

That was with the benefit of delivering repeated content. Biden doesn’t deliver this same speech twice a month. I’m sure he practiced but it’s still a big ask regardless of age.

https://youtu.be/pSlG_m-bbGM?si=iaAzX_pNlNBbdOnz

Name and shame the airline.

I fly a lot for work, internationally most of the time. Haven’t seen this in many years.

Where do you think GPT got this data?

Twitter silently backing into the bushes