mike carey

To start off the conversation, I always used two spaces after a full stop, and it made sense with fixed width fonts (as used with typewriters). Now, I use one space, and the previous comments on proportional fonts are apposite. Yes, Microsoft reinforced this as its grammar check threw in those green squiggly lines under the text when you used two spaces, but it never auto-corrected when I was using it (if it did, you can turn off auto-corrects item by item). I never learnt typing, it wasn't a thing when I was at school, but when I went to uni I did teach myself to touch type (I still look at times but I use the correct fingers for each letter!) by sticking paper over the keys on my typewriter.

*notes for a meeting with CollegeDom, say Abba are wonderful and anyone who disagrees is a fool. That should make him like me*

'Kies' would probably rhyme with 'pies', so not a useful example. I would say Australia is diverse, so the use of 'are' for the US is not a given. I would interpret 'is' to mean the country as a whole is diverse irrespective of state boundaries (which it is) and 'are' to mean that the states as entities in the country are diverse in that they are different from each other (which they also are). I have never seen 'money are' and I'm usually aware of British usage. I'm with others that words like university, council, staff, parliament and congress could take either singular or plural verbs. Sometimes for slightly different meanings, and sometimes just different writing styles.

Him: 'Nothing personal, merely my professional opinion.' You: 'You might wish to reserve your professional opinions for your own patients. If you've managed to retain any.' (Please forgive my underlying assumption there.)

It was about 6.30am Saturday here, but I didn't get up for it, some cloud was forecast. That time of day is perfect for the red colour as the light has a long angled passage through the atmosphere.

Yes, straws are only a small part of the problem, but they are an easy one. There are people for whom a durable aid to drinking is necessary, but as noted there are steel and glass alternatives. Of which more in a moment. And there is the paper version (less robust, of course) that we used to use. All sorts of marine plastics are a threat to sea turtles, and all sorts end up in the gyres. Straws are a particularly visible one that wildlife rescue services see. Plastic bags that look like jellyfish are a more insidious threat. This week the second season of 'War on Waste' started on ABC television here and a sea turtle made from straws is one of the props they are using, taking it into McDonalds and pubs to argue the case. (They had a number of pubs agree to join an anti-straw campaign not by banning them but by taking them off the counter and only supplying them when they were asked for, with a sign on the bar explaining what they were doing. As they used tens of thousands a year, they had an economic incentive to join in.) Reducing unnecessary plastic is a long game, scale of impact and ease of taking each step are separate parts of it, both need to be done and every bit counts. Last year's War on Waste had disposable coffee cups as a focus issue, they are made of paper layered with plastic and cannot be recycled. We use over a billion a year. The program caused a spike of shops selling reusable cups, and customers being prepared to carry a cup with them. There has also been a controversy here as supermarkets phased out single use plastic carry-bags in the states where they had not already been banned and instead sold reusable bags of various types. (War on Waste had also rolled a 3m-diameter ball of plastic bags around to press for their withdrawal from use, embarrassing politicians out for a run or at an event.) From the protests you'd think the world had come to an end. Those of us in states where they were already banned rolled our eyes, and said 'Get over it, taking your own bags isn't hard'. Councils are being pressured (successfully) to ban plastic cutlery at outdoor events and mandate compostable ones. I had previously seen people advocate carrying cutlery with you rather than take disposable ones when you buy take-away food. If there is a common theme, it is that you can take your own reusable item rather than take a single use plastic version when you buy something. Whether you are forced to by a ban or decide to for your own reasons it's not difficult once you get into the habit. (You don't forget your wallet, or not often.) People could carry a straw with them if they like using one, and they could live without disposable ones. Here, we've managed it with shopping bags, people are doing it with coffee cups. Replacing plastic straws is a small action with a small effect, but remember that straw that broke the camel's back.

In a news panel show a couple of years ago one of the panellists referred to a good outcome in some political context as a 'happy ending', to the considerable mirth of the rest of the panel and much of the audience. She had no idea what was funny about what she had said. Not so much a gay issue but an example of a less than universally known meaning for innocent sounding words.

On really hot days, you could always bring the pots they are in into your house/apartment. Regardless, keep up the water to them.

I think I need to go to Brisbane and see if I can find him....

It's a map of Nantucket Island.

Meanwhile in the southern hemisphere (where it's winter) Canberra has just had two heavy frost nights -6.2 and -7.4 (that's 20.8F and 18.7F) which is cold for this place. Don't worry, I'll mention temperatures in the 40s here when it's snowing there next December and January!

An appropriate comment might be, `Build a bridge`. Tangents, and downright highjacks are a fact of life here.

Thanks for posting that @fedssocr1

There are dangers with deformed cans, but denting in itself isn't one of them. Evidence of bulging certainly is. I would see this as an issue of cost. If you can buy dented cans more cheaply elsewhere, factor that into your decision of whether to buy by mail order. Do a test on the next consignment, count the number of undamaged cans and the number of dented cans and work out how much you would pay buying that many of each locally. If that calculation puts mail order ahead, just take it, and limit your customer service calls to times when they exceed the average number of damaged cans. (Don't disregard the fact that by complaining you are giving them feedback on their shipping company, if they change shipping arrangements that could push up the price.)

If that is how you describe yourself, that's fine, but the question is broader than that. I describe myself as gay, but that's about me, not the community. Bi, trans and intersex people are not, by definition, homosexual (although they may also use that label). There is a debate whether LGBT, LGBTI or LGBT+ is a single community, but that is a deflection. They suffer types of discrimination and oppression that are similar so it helps to make common purpose. I think the important thing is to recognise that whether you include the I or the + or the other letters is not a deliberate act of exclusion of the letters you omit, it`s linguistic economy.

Whoa! In this para you've conflated MSM rates and general population rates, but that became clearer in later posts. The 2, 4 and 11 figures are the key ones, at least to start with, and they are for MSM. 99 is for the general population (i.e. not just MSM). The figures don`t appear to control for other risk factors like injecting drug use, so they point to a need for outreach and public health measures on all risk factors for African-American men, not just sexual health issues.

Thanks @VictorPowers

I'm so gullible! You conned me as well. What can I say?

Yes! That line hadn't been in any of the TV versions I'd seen.

Polonius, if I recall correctly.

I love this ad, for a brand of coffee flavoured milk. A father thinks of naming his new son Callum Murray (say it quickly out loud). https://dailycommercials.com/dare-iced-coffee-callum-murray/

I think Tasso was referring to American French-speakers not American-French speakers (and by American, of the continent not of the US). At the risk or Anglo-splaining (if there were such a thing), the misunderstanding seems to hinge on overlooking a distinction between two separate groups of (North) American French speakers, [non-bilingual] anglophones who are speaking in French and francophone Quebeckers. Anglos speaking French, whether they are from the US or Canada would probably have similar accents, and may be disparaged by people in France. Quebeckers, as you note, speak French differently than other francophones, and as I understand it, they are also disparaged by the French. Obviously the two groups can't be lumped in together. *I deliberately referred to people who speak Quebec French because I know there are francophone immigrants (form Haiti, Africa and Lebanon for example) who form yet another group of North American French speakers.

Those . weren't . hugs!

Have a great day, Killian!

Indeed, you are not, forearms are a consistent theme in his twitter timeline, and IIRC he has a webpage devoted to the subject.