If it determines their name sounds like (((one of them))), MechaHitler could lock its doors and detonate its batteries, helping to continue its namesake’s mission.

There was an old wacky-crooks story about a one-legged man who kept getting arrested stealing display shoes from shops when they matched his remaining leg.

Threadbare. In cities like NYC, it approximates European transport, though is somewhat more dysfunctional. Elsewhere, you have things like “commuter rail” (like a regio/S-bahn, only with next to no off-peak service, running solely as a shuttle between CBDs and dormitory suburbs). There’s Amtrak, but it’s slow and infrequent and runs on tracks owned by freight railroads, and often is delayed by hours from waiting for freight trains to pass. Bus services have a stigma, associating them with poor (and typically non-white) people, to the point where people who have a choice avoid them, and vote to minimise the amount of their tax money that goes to pay for them. And in some Republican states, the government has scrapped even buses, replacing them with Uber vouchers mailed to households.

So yes, DB is creaking and needs investment to bring it up to scratch, but its service levels (even when wracked by delays) are utopian compared to most of the US.

What’s the frequency for forklift/crane certificates or similar? Driving a car should be regulated similarly (with the proviso that it is accepted that many blameless people will be found unfit to drive, and society should accommodate them by means other than lowering safety standards).

Cats’ hearts are also on the right-hand side of their chests, the opposite to where humans’ are. Not sure if this correlates with handedness.

Azerbaijan will go to Türkiye, while Armenia will seek closer ties with the EU.

The KGB has had a file on Krasnov since the time Putin was on their staff, so I’m sure he has a detailed guide on how to string him along, comprised of input from four decades of handlers.

Maybe if he lifts sanctions on weapons to Russia, Putin will return the favour and there’ll be peace. If not, maybe giving them some Tomahawks will sweeten the deal.

Loyalty to the leader, and implicitly knowing whom to ratfuck to climb the ladder.

Sometimes discretion is the greater part of valour.

If you’re going to name a cat that, adopt two and name the other Weed or something.

The other option in the other direction is to join a swingers’ club or similar and keep it purely sexual, though leave open the possibility that something more may come of it.

You may be better off joining a club/group activity around a common interest. That way, even if you don’t meet anyone, you have something to do that isn’t soul-destroying.

This sounds like, in the best case, it’d be like one of those Christian alternative-rock festivals, organised to demonstrate that you don’t need the Devil’s music to have fun, where you have bands playing watered-down, Jesused-up versions of punk/emo/metal and some dad in Vans and a studded belt taking the mike between bands to tell everyone that the raddest thing is to obey your parents and abstain from drugs and premarital sex.

A more likely scenario, though, would involve this being to some extent an anti-wokeness hate rally, with conspiracy theories about how the foundations of Western Civilisation are under threat from the gays and communists and, of course, (((those people))).

The full swathe from Art Nouveau/Jugendstil through Art Deco/Moderne and Bauhaus functionalism through to 1950s modernism. If I had to be more specific, I’d focus on British interwar modernism.

If the rate of ghost dissipation (at which they either cross over to the afterlife or just fade) is lower than the death rate, ghosts will build up, and after a while, it will be statistically overwhelmingly likely that any random ghost is very old.

Only because it’s now empty and all the devils are here

You and Franz Kafka.

Horny and stingy is not a good look.

The sphex wasp laying its larva in living, paralysed prey.