Oh, yeah - I 100% agree. I was just trying to convey how ludicrously easy it is to grow your own. There’s no way you should base an entire survival strategy on just potatoes, despite how plausible Matt Damon made it seem.

Get yourself a patch of soil, even if it’s just a couple of growbags, and grow potatoes. They’re like a magical self-replicating food. When you harvest them, keep some aside to plant later. One potato produces 5-10 potatoes easily, scale up for infinite potato glitch.

If you live in the UK or EU, you can even literally just plant ones you buy in the vegetable section in the supermarket. In the US, they often treat these with a growth inhibitor to extend the shelf-life, they won’t grow as easily.

Seed potatoes are guaranteed to produce healthy plants, but cost slightly more. You can buy them from garden centres or online.

Both produced in South Korea? 🤷‍♂️

Maybe another thing worth considering is that rectangular flags are just bigger and easier to see than other shapes.

Also, maybe it just became “normal” to have square flags. The Romans conquered most of Europe, and they flew rectangular banners from their standards. Following the fall of the empire, the different parts of Europe were at war with each other for one and a half thousand years. I suspect all having had this original template, then the subsequent fighting / conquering / reconquering / reconquering, probably lead to this shape becoming normalised.

Not just mass-manufacturing - because of how they work, the rectangle is the default shape of cloth produced on any loom.

I mean, the red robes and glowing orb do have a certain appeal.

The world (or at least the Anglosphere) has always called the # symbol the hash sign. I have no idea why Americans called it the pound sign - most places call the £ symbol the pound sign.

The term “hashtag” was not invented by an American. For the rest of us this makes sense - it’s a tag denoted by a hash sign - but I can see how it seemingly came out of nowhere if you used different words.

This hits the nail in the head.

I have a friend who grew up in the USSR. From what she’s told me, the social pressure around pulling your weight can’t be overstated.

For example, her school uniform had a scarf, and the punishment for most offences (being late, not doing homework etc) was to have your scarf taken away for a day or two. Instead of being trapped in detention away from everyone after school, you had to spend the day publicly marked out as someone who’s let the side down. You’d spend the day subjected to disapproving looks, and then when you got home have to explain to your parents why you had your scarf taken away.

Oooh, you said the 愛 word. A million downvotes for you.

It’s probably worth mentioning that this doesn’t just stop at legislation. A lot of things in the UK are the way they are, just because that’s the way they’ve always been.

What’s the official flag of the UK? It doesn’t have one. The Union Jack was a naval flag that became our defacto national flag. Before WW1, people could have lived their entire life without seeing a Union Jack.

What’s the official national anthem of the UK? It doesn’t have one. God save the King / Queen is our defacto national anthem. It was a song that gained popularity and people adopted it unofficially.

OK then. What’s the official language of the UK? You probably guessed - it doesn’t have one. English is only the defacto language of the UK. In fact, the only official language anywhere in the UK is Welsh, in Wales (obviously), where the vast majority of people speak English as their first language anyway.

Seeing as you start the question with “In the show”, I can fairly confidently say no, Squidward is never explicitly stated to be a communist.

I imagine “good for them”.

My kids are Anglican, they go to a Catholic school. Half of all students there are from denominations other than Catholicism.

There isn’t really any animosity there.

Could not agree more - Christianity is supposed to be about the teachings of Jesus.

The vast majority of the Bible is not about that stuff, but it provides context for it.

Jesus taught respect for others and unconditional love. Surprisingly, Penny Arcade probably summed it up in the most succinct way I’ve ever seen it phrased: "Jesus says “don’t be a dick” ".

Someone would have to be delusional to look at the people that Jesus mixed with and advocated for, and conclude that he wouldn’t have similarly defended the marginalised groups of our time.

Good catch! You are 100% correct.

I’ll update the message, but strikethrough the original so this still makes sense.

I’ll admit, I didn’t know the Supreme Court had said that.

It’s an insane interpretation - and I see that many justices said so at the time.

I guess whether or not the writers of the amendment actually meant every able-bodied man when they wrote “well-regulated militia”, or whether they meant a militia, is impossible to know for sure.

But to say that the word meant something different at the time is patently untrue. Around the English speaking world at that time, local militias - with that specific word used - were used to keep order. It was a common word for an actual thing people would have been familiar with.

That’s half right…

Militias were always things that you joined and they had a chain of command. Just because they were volunteer forces, it doesn’t mean that they weren’t an organisation. The Peterloo Massacre (1819) was conducted by the local militia. They were all volunteers, but they operated as a paramilitary group.

“Well-regulated militia” literally meant what it sounds like today - a well-regulated volunteer armed force.

The amendment is saying that the government shall not prevent people from joining well-regulated armed militias. Which admittedly sounds terrifying to modern ears but, historically, armed militias helped keep the peace in the days before police forces.

It depends.

Are the people actually part of a well-regulated militia, necessary to the security of a free state? Or had the government spent the last century reframing that right as “any idiot can own a lethal weapon without training”, and as a result the people are a disorganised and easily-suppressible rabble?

There are worse places to live.

Don’t get me wrong, there are loads of better places to live, but there are definitely worse places.

America makes great animated series. It makes great movies sometimes too. Admittedly both of these things are usually actually made overseas, but you guys write them.

You also have a nice flag. Although you do kind of ruin it by being super weird about them.

You have really cheap petrol / gas. That’s definitely something you beat most of the world at. I think that’s the winner - cheap gas.

If masked vigilante crime-fighters count, I have a true story that might give you faith that there are superheroes out there.

This is before COVID.

There were a lot of homeless people in Manchester City Centre. There still is, but before COVID, it was more pronounced.

There was a homeless guy who used to sit in front of the building where I worked. On my way out of work, I used to grab him a cup of coffee and chat with him for a few minutes before heading off for my tram.

One Monday as I approached him I notice that snaking out from under his hat is quite a deep and angry-looking cut that had been stitched.

I asked him about it and he said some guy had come walking down the road attacking homeless people with a broken bottle. They’d all been taken to hospital, patched up and given antibiotics, but everyone was really scared now.

A couple of days later, he mentioned that the police have found the guy who did it. And ‘found’ is the correct word - the guy was lying by the side of the canal beaten to a bloody pulp. Apparently he’d been attacked by someone dressed all in black wearing a black mask.

So, I know for a fact that there is at least one person willing to put on a costume in the height of summer and beat up villains - I imagine there are many more.

Third’s the one with the hairy chest!