Lib Dems to the left of Labour? I would have thought with the Overton window shifting, they’d still be occupying a position between Labour and the Conservatives like they always have… but I guess it’s possible with some of Labour’s suspiciously Conservative decisions lately.

PR will only work if safeguards can be put in place beforehand to prevent one or more parties (political or individual) in an alliance causing a complete government shutdown every time they don’t get their way.

What are the odds, do you think, that such safeguards would be put in place when the larger political parties prefer FPTP?

Yeah, you’re right, the downvote was a bit harsh considering that I didn’t do a deep dive on the matter.

I can’t undo the bandwagon, but I can undo mine.

Well, there was a period in the 90s through to the early 2000s where we had a centre-left party (New Labour) running the show and mostly improving things, but then 9/11 and the Iraq war happened and the country went scurrying back to the Conservatives again.

The conspiracy nut that lives in my brain is convinced Putin’s taking control of Russia in 2000 has everything to do with every single bit of the above after “but then”.

We currently have New Labour (now just “Labour”) in charge again, but politically they smell an awful lot like the pre-Thatcherite Conservatives.

Well for whatever it’s worth, you’re welcome.

That “feeling adrift” sounds a little bit how depersonalisation and/or derealisation were described to me when I was trying to get diagnoses. I didn’t feel like they fit my experience of mental illness at all (everything feels real enough (maybe too much), and I’ve never felt adrift), and I’m not a doctor so I’d be the last person to try to diagnose either in someone else, but they might be things for you to look into.

The universes where each and every would-be hero is terminally stomped for merely thinking about going on a quest are uncountable.

There are countable subsets where something other than that happens, and one of those subsets is where the universe rules provide enough wiggle room for a hero to win.

It is all but certain we live in one of the former. Stories about the latter give us hope that we might not be.

Compare: Why do the Power Rangers not simply create the Megazord in the first place and stomp the bad guy before its inevitable enlargement?

They’ll find a way to launch it. They’ll go back into the old Soviet mindset of throwing blini at a wall until something sticks sending cosmonaut after cosmonaut until they have a success and then pretend the others didn’t exist.

And they’ll fill the minds of young would-be cosmonauts full of propaganda and tell them that there was definitely no-one before them who died up there, especially not in pain or terror. Those were unmanned test missions. Strap yourself in, you’re going to space!

Is there a name for the trope of something topical but not strictly necessary happening incidental to a punchline like the microwave in the last panel?

I know I’ve seen it in other places, but the only other instance I can think of is the people saying “I am a consumer whore!” “And how!” in the Rejected cartoon, and I’m not even sure that qualifies.

Maybe a few things that happen in the asdfmovies too, but they often introduce a recurring gag or a different joke entirely.

I don’t think this is sexuality, it’s politics. Wario is clearly a UKIP supporter and Waluigi is UKIP / Tory coded.

(all in jest of course. Or is it?)

The NSA and GCHQ have both run their own TOR nodes and presumably already have an excellent understanding of how it works, so there’s bound to be at least one person, if not an entire department, at the FBI who already understands TOR better than most of the people reading this comment.

I can’t say they improved my mood much, so there wasn’t a great deal to notice, but I have noticed a distinct lack in extreme lows since I started taking it.

The trouble with mood-altering and mood-stabilising medications (and behaviours if you count things like exercise) is that they can affect perception not only in the present, but about past thoughts and behaviours too, so spotting any obvious change might require some effort.

Case in point, it took me a long while to notice that I haven’t been having the crushing lows, and part of me still believes that it’s not the Vitamin D that’s responsible.

Best as I can tell there’s no evidence that Vitamin D and kidney stones have anything to do with each other, and in fact, there may even be scientific papers in existence that suggest the opposite is true, i.e. Vitamin D may help reduce the risk of kidney stones.

Caveat: This was based on a quick web search, not deep research, and everyone’s biology is different. If you’re getting kidney stones, check with an actual doctor.

“What would ‘palindrome’ look like if it was a palindrome?”

Two. kbin.social and kbin.run (which was actually an Mbin by the time it vanished).

Interesting to compare and contrast with Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe who deliberately wore a toothbrush moustache and referred to himself as “The Hitler of our time”.

Also interesting that now Mugabe is dead, there seem to be quite a few potential candidates for that title.

But, as best as I can tell, Uunona isn’t in the running there.

Will the war end if he dies?

Untrue. There are plenty of people who don’t have the means to break pseudonymity but who would gladly torment, abuse or seek retribution for some real or imagined slight from someone they can easily identify by face and name.

And it’s always worth making the truly scary ones work for it, because they’re far more likely to go for easier marks first.

Note that the same logic applies to locking your doors at home. You don’t leave your doors unlocked, right?

Wrong question. It’s “Who would I need to hide from?”

Hey man, the line’s gotta be somewhere, right? :p

Well, no, it wouldn’t. The bods that make these decisions still live like it’s 1950 and dream of an authoritarian future of masters and slaves.

What good is The Google or The AI when you’re sipping champagne up an ivory tower or out on the ocean being waited on hand and foot on a gleaming yacht?