Then there’s only one thing for it.

https://youtu.be/NcsECg6RtcM

I assume that’s an extract from this incredibly compelling manifesto:

https://youtu.be/NAh9oLs67Cw

Oh, hey.

Well it’s a portable machine designed specifically to cause death and injury, and as they go, yes, it’s a pretty decent machine designed to cause death and injury.

Billy Ray Cyrus: Best Mullet, Joe Dirt: Most Impressive, Theo Von: Would

I feel like the “accused of” bit is unnecessary. Also change “unrest” to “terror, violence and death”. And replace “Belfast knife attack” with “anything they can think of”.

It’s terrorism. Actual terrorism. It’s causing terror with the aim to terrorise people into surrendering their rights and changing their way of like because they’re terrified by all the terror caused by terrorist’s terrorism.

They cannot use reason because there is no reason. They cannot use hope because they offer nothing to hope for. They can’t use diplomacy to unite because they resent unity. So they use terror, irrational carnal terror to fuel irrational carnal reactions. Like all terrorists.

FWIW, The Satanic Temple is different from The Church of Satan and/or the Satanic Church. To start with, we don’t believe in Satan.

AI Satan does sound horrendously hellish, though. “You’re correct, and you are absolutely right to call me out on it! I can see now how submerging you in searing hot lye would be unpleasant, especially after you begged me to stop! Here, let me try again, this time paying extra attention to not submerging you in searing hot lye.” <Proceeds to submerge you in searing hot lye>

I mean, hypothetically couldn’t you just pick any belief structure outside of the top ten and make shit up? I’m a card carrying member of The Satanic Temple (which also puts an emphasis on human worth and social conscience) and I feel like I could swing this.

You know where had some of the world’s highest vehicle safety standards? France.

You know what you see everywhere in France?

Probably a categorisation thing to make them more accessible. In Europe there’s a class of vehicle called Motor Quadricycle which are subject to very relaxed taxes and regulation compared to cars but have to meet very strict regulations about size, speed, capacity, etc. In France they call them San Permits because you literally don’t need a driver’s license to drive one of you were born before 1990, and anyone else aged 14+ only need to have had a minimal training session (those numbers might be a bit odd but you get the idea). A lot of people who simply couldn’t get a license to drive a car can still get one of these - for better or worse.

I don’t think this is true

Actually, I think the links you provide back my points up pretty well. In fact, the Wikipedia articles you linked mentions that the Sovereign Grant is “15% to 25%” of the profits of the Royal Estate, not 25% to 35% as I thought. That’s means the Government keeps 75% to 85% of their income, which is the “effective tax rate of at least 60%” I was talking about.

they own private residences… self sustaining not for profit…

Aristocrats gonna aristocrat. There isn’t a stately home in the country that doesn’t generate income from just existing. The National Trust owns a lot of them and is a charity that is broadly laudable, but most of the rest don’t burden themselves with the notion of being “non-profit”.

since 1993 the Monarch’s personal income has been taxable as for any other taxpayer

And as you mentioned, the rest of their income is taxed as if they were normal humans rather than aristocrats. It may be on a “voluntary” and incredibly malleable basis, but that’s probably because they know they’d get crucified if they didn’t and, regardless, the income from non-Crown Estate concerns is basically negligible.

I feel the same as I do about all the other landed gentry who were also in there.

I’m from the UK and I’m a Monarchist in so much as I want to keep the Royal Family. I certainly don’t like the idea of Kings and Queens broadly speaking and “respect” is a strong word, but here in the UK we’ve got a lot of institutions that have vile histories but wouldn’t serve to benefit anyone if we were to scrap them today.

The Mountbatten-Windsor family also happen to be the Royal Family. These days they’re basically powerless and have less influence and sway than pundits on GB News, the Murdoch media and Facebook, who also aren’t elected. But they’re still an aristocratic family, which means they have access to extraordinary wealth and control of a vast business empire… except they don’t. All their estates, land, businesses, interests, etc are held in reserve as the Crown Estate which is operated on their behalf by a Government-appointed manager. The income from the Crown Estate goes straight to the Government and the Government pays the Royal Family a salary - the Sovereign Grant - which is typically between 25% and 35% of the Crown Estate’s profits. So for all those people who say “ThEy’Re TaX dOdGiNg PaRaSiTeS”: they pay an effective tax rate of at least 60%, which is about 60% more than anyone else with that income. Anyone who moans about the couple of quid a year the Royal Family “costs” them must be ecstatic beyond words to learn about the few extra quid they actually make in profit.

Having a Royal Family is amazing for tourism. Yes, the French have palaces too, but they attract nothing like the numbers as the actual real, functioning palaces and castles actually used by a real, breathing monarchs. The Palace of Versailles makes Buckingham Palace look like a shanty but can you guess which one nets more visitors? Windsor Castle, same deal. Moreover, they’re an amazing soft political power. What would your response be if you found out the Prime Minister of the UK was visiting your country? For most people it’d probably be “oh, who is it this week?”. But what about a visit from the Actual King of England? There would be grand receptions, concerts, speeches, unveilings, all because the Actual King of Actual England is coming. Add demagogues like Trump to the equation and the Royal’s value is amplified further.

Then there’s the scrutiny. We all know the Andrew Formally Known As Prince being a nasty little pervert and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s far more to it. And yet, no-one talks about the Dysons, or the Cavendish-es, or the Rothschilds, or the Montagus, and so on, all of whom are richer and more powerful than the Mountbatten-Windsors and far, far, far more sinister and vile, but they’re not the Royal Family so they’re unknowns. They make the Royals look like cherubs, but they’re well-connected enough to avoid scrutiny and smart enough to remain basically anonymous. Personally, if I was the King I’d tell the UK to fuck off. I’d make the UK a Republic, take my estates and wealth and power back, thankyou very much, and tell everyone to go suck their Mum’s dicks. I don’t know why or how they continue being the Royal Family, but if we “got rid” of them tomorrow we’d lose a tremendous political power and gain yet another unaccountable group of unjustifiably powerful aristocrats.

I’ve never used it, but W is a firehose service like BlueSky or Twitter, hosted in the EU. It uses the at-protocol for federation (incompatible with ActivityPub) so it works with other firehose services like BlueSky.

I’d guess a few hundred if we count airport hookups and the like. There was this period where I was doing three return flights a week and rarely missed a hook-up. Also, staying overnight in foreign city.

Also: don’t bother with the mile high club. Even the first class toilets on long-hauls don’t have room.

It still pisses me off that so many Lasagna Cat videos were taken down.

Obviously this wouldn’t work without a Mega CD.

I’d just like to hijack this thread to post one of my all time favourite websites:

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/swipe/

It’s the National Library of Scotland’s map site’s side-by-side viewer which lets you browse classic maps synced with modern ones. UK-centric, but it still has loads of global and international maps too.

Those features you mentioned are actual quite widespread: the EU, Norway, Poland, the UK, Australia, Canada, NZ, and more all have them. It’s really just the US that insist on having basically indistinguishable sludge-coloured notes. I used to handle international currently regular and hated dealing with US dollars.