Read as in, with their eyes? Or how to ingest it into some other app/script? Cos I’m vaguely aware that awk can be used in some way for this, but wouldn’t have a clue how.

Wait, what happens in Acre?

Oh, I see. That seems…very non-obvious, given it only refers to “ICE vehicles”, and a certain subset of ICE vehicles are a popular target for vandalism because of their association with the kind of person likely to be a fan of the ICE government department (and because of their even greater overall societal harm than regular vehicles).

Why only ICE vehicles? EVs might be marginally better, but cars are still cars, and they kill hundreds of people every year, cost billions of dollars in direct infrastructure costs (in the huge subsidies that roads get), and untold amounts more in indirect infrastructure costs (because of how inefficient low-density car-centric sprawl is wrt things like sewerage and other municipal infrastructure). Over about 20 km/h the noise pollution is roughly equally bad, and the plastic pollution from tyres is just as bad if not worse on EVs.

What’s needed isn’t to push people from ICE vehicles onto EVs, it’s to encourage people to use (and more importantly, governments to support) active transport like walking and cycling first and foremost, with public transport for longer journeys.

I’m also not a big fan of that sort of indiscriminate vandalism anyway. I’m not gonna bat an eye if you’re doing it to all yank tanks, but people’s sedans and hatchbacks? That’s a bit much, IMO.

A little more context for anyone not aware. Epistolary just means it’s like the book equivalent of the Blair Witch Project. It claims to be written not by some outside author like most books, but to be the literal transcriptions of the characters’ diary entries, letters, news articles, and phonograph recordings. All of these are of course dated in-universe, with the first of Jonathan Harker’s diary entries taking place on 3rd May. So we’re reading through it as it happens.

Days 1 and 2 are very short, and there isn’t any entry on 6 May, so you’ve got plenty of time to catch up if you want to join in on 7th May.

Minor correction: the days don’t actually match up to “chapters” of the book. Chapter 1 is made up of 3, 4, and half of 5 May. Chapter 2 is the 2nd half of 5 May, 7 May, and the 1st half of 8 May. I’m not 100% sure as I’ve never read the book this way before, but I believe later on, doing it this way will actually mean we read it slightly out of the normal reading order, too, especially as relates to the news articles and shifting POVs.

What do you mean other extinct groups? That implies dinosaurs are extinct.

I’ve started a Dracula Daily–inspired read-through and book club over on [email protected], if you, @[email protected], or @[email protected] are interested in joining.

That’s enrolling to vote. This is about requesting a mail-in ballot for people who are already enrolled.

In Australia, one way you can apply for a postal vote is by sending an application form by mail to the Australian Electoral Commission—the nonpartisan government agency responsible for overseeing federal elections.

Political parties like our centre-right–to–far-right LNP and centre-left–to–centre-right Labor will often send you a letter, in the lead-up to an election. Inside that letter will be an application form, and a reply-paid envelope addressed to the party headquarters. But the address doesn’t say “LNP party headquarters”, it says something like “postal vote centre”.

If you fill out the form, I believe the parties are obligated to send it on to the AEC. But there is no law preventing them from harvesting your data to use for marketing purposes before they do so. Because political parties have exempted themselves from a lot of the usual privacy laws.

There have also been accusations that they might delay sending your details on by a few days if you’re from an area less likely to vote for them. Increasing the chances your postal vote doesn’t arrive in time for you to actually use it. Not sure how founded that is, and I doubt it would be legal, but it also may be difficult to prove.

Political parties sending you a reply-paid envelope that says it’ll enrol you to vote postal ballot, with a return address that sends your information to that party, so long as they eventually do forward your info on to the Electoral Commission to register you for a postal vote.

The Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment with no real relationship to Greek mythology other than that it takes its name from famous Greek hero sailor Theseus.

It says, if Theseus replaces on board on his ship, is it still the same ship? What if he then replaces another board? And another, and another, until eventually not a single part of the ship was there in the original? Is it the same ship then?

As an extension, what if you took all those boards removed from the original ship and put them back together? Is that Theusus’s ship?

That depends? How good are your singing voices? And do you viciously attack innocent passers-by?

Wahoo absolutely does this.

Oh that’s an interesting point. I noticed the timing of that event and even thought similar, but didn’t quite reach that conclusion.

And “f” in the place of what should be the “long s” (as well as where fs should be).

Ah interesting. I noticed those hints, but thought they were going in a different direction.

Re the context of when the book was written…I didn’t actually know it was based on a book, as I watched it. I did already know that as I wrote this review, but that was too late to shape my original interpretation of the film as I watched it.

Plus, I don’t really love it as an excuse. There are two possibilities as I see it. Either it worked in the book but didn’t translate well to screen, in which case they should have made the necessary changes to come up with something that did work. Or it didn’t work in the book and they should have taken the opportunity of the adaptation to improve upon it. It wouldn’t be the first time an adaptation significantly changed the source material.

with quite a bit of foreshadowing that he is going to be corrupted by a lust for power

Yeah I definitely saw this and was a little disappointed it didn’t amount to anything. I left it out because I wasn’t actually sure it was really there, or if I just read it into the film without serious evidence.

It’s like a 9/10 film for 85% that drops to a 6/10 right at the end

Those are almost the exact numbers I was gonna give it. I’d have said 8/10 down to 6/10.

The Rest is History. Good banter between the hosts. Huge backlog on a variety of topics.

Origin Story. This one might be a little outside your wheelhouse, or might not, depending on what you’re after. Specifically, it talks about the origins (and thus the history) mostly of political ideologies like neoliberalism and zionism, political figures like Thatcher, Churchill, and Jordan Peterson, and movements or terms like the Suffragettes and the term “woke”.

Which part of the ending can you see coming? The person who ends up being pope, I predicted based purely on narrative structure right from the beginning. The twist after he becomes pope? I never would have called it, so I’d love to know what the early clues are to that.

Personally, I wouldn’t have minded the ending if it hadn’t felt so rushed.