Heh. Yeah, I can’t really hold up a country backsliding on trans rights as an example of an effective constitutional monarchy.

I think taking a broad view, there are quite a lot of constitutional monarchies that are really great places to live (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, New Zealand, Canada, the Bahamas, Japan, to name a few). There are also quite a lot of republics that can claim the same. So, from a sort of human development POV, I don’t think it really matters very much.

[EDIT: Should’ve added that there are also plenty of republics and monarchies that are disasters, too. My point is that there’s no consistent pattern of one works and the other doesn’t.]

Sure, monarchies are a bit daft but I think ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ is quite a good rule. Especially since spending time on fixing things that ain’t broke is time you could be spending on fixing things that are broke. I live in the UK and we have a lot of major problems that need our attention. It’s better to focus on those than have a big argument about the King when, as we can see from international comparisons, the King isn’t really the issue.

Yes, very useful for subtle distinctions like this!

Yes, it’s metonymy, as people have said. You also get it in similar contexts where people will name a building such as ‘the White House’ or ‘[10] Downing Street’ to refer to the governments of the US or the UK.

Any MBA?

/s indeed, but you did remind me of a cool image, above: the Earth (and the Moon) not only from space, but from the orbit of Mars!

And, below, the Earth as seen from Mars’ surface:

It’s the the tiny white dot, just left and up from centre.

Wind up music boxes. I don’t know why, but regardless of the melody they play, I find them super creepy.

I don’t speak it super well, but I can get by.

Totally understandable. I hate a particular type of architecture because of a job I had in a building of that style.

I’d like my corpse to be used to frame someone for murder. Obviously I can’t name names, because that would undermine the plot, but I trust my loved ones to frame up someone who has it coming.

Here are the Encyclopedia Britannica pages for Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney, which have the same dates of birth for both individuals as cited above.

Yes.

Dick Cheney is 83 (born 1941).

Liz Cheney is 58 (born 1966).

83-58=25

So Dick Cheney was 25 when his daughter was born. This seems pretty normal and certainly not impossible.

You raise a fair point: what exactly is a zombie? To me, a zombie is not a sapient thing, so if it remembers its previous sapience, it’s not a zombie. But zombies aren’t real, which makes it difficult to define them precisely.

No. Jesus had his intellect and personality intact, which zombies do not.

NB: I’m taking the Gospels as gospel, here. I do not think the man himself rose from the dead.

You may well be right and that’s why it’s vital not to be complacent. Donate, volunteer, vote. Get out there and make a Harris win happen!

easy to profit by re selling

This was exactly the reason they shut down the 3DS marketplace: re-selling old games is more profitable via Switch Online than it was through the 3DS marketplace!

Real (I assume you mean proven) conspiracies start off as theories.

No, they don’t. Conspiracy theories are not ‘theories about conspiracies’. You are both misusing the term ‘conspiracy theory’ and wrongly describing the Tuskegee experiment as a conspiracy, which it never was. One of the people who originally called it out did so after reading about it in a published scientific paper! The pereptrators of that ‘experiment’ lied to the participants, but they were not otherwise secretive, otherwise they wouldn’t have been writing and publishing papers about it.

Fuck off

I’m not going to discuss this further with someone who cannot do so civilly.

The Tuskegee Experiment was not a conspiracy theory. So, in that sense you’re right.

Conspiracy theories and theorists are homogenous: the flawed thinking is inherent to the concept. Conspiracy theories are untrue by definition, and nothing to do with real conspiracies.

No, it isn’t. He’s a conspiracy theorist. Voting for him is endorsing conspiracy theorists.

RFK is less coherent than Biden politically and intellectually, which is what matters.