Improve education for girls worldwide. A very strong link has been established by numerous studies.

Leaving aside points about driving licence numbers being unique or whatever, it would be the silver pentagram that I made back in the '90s and have worn (or occasionally carry in my wallet etc, when the cord breaks) ever since.

By that age, I was into my third long-term job (> 5 years) and had had upwards of 16 short term ones - multiple part time ones at once, or some just for a few weeks or a couple of months here and there between the long-term ones etc.

48 doesn’t seem that unlikely - nor even an indicator that they will not be staying put for any length of time unless your job is a shitty one with a high turnover anyway.

I think that the closest that I had at school was the library. Even decades later I am still happy when surrounded by books.

Otherwise, somewhere green: walking in woodland or sitting by a stream always improves things.

I’ve had the same number for 24 years now. I have only ever had a handful of spam calls in total over that time.

I probably get one a month or so on my work number.

Basically all of them.

A quick skim shows me that the only people who have called me this so far this year are:

• Doctor
• Dentist
• Sister
• Wife
• Close friend

I expect that this would be much the same for last year too.

I have no reason not to speak to any of these.

Doctor who (2005) s01e07 - Kronkburgers on Satellite 5 in the opening scenes.

At the point where you and the AI can see someone straightening their tie in a certain way and you and the AI can exchange a single wordless glance and you both burst out laughing 'cos it was just like that thing that you both saw 6 months ago and found hilarious then - then maybe.

Not before.

I am - in the UK - and I think that it should be opt out rather than opt in.

I am a pagan. There are pretty much no widely accepted texts within paganism that make any statements about subject. In my experience most pagans are quite happy to coexist with other religions in general - and given that in almost all circumstances pagans will be in a small minority that makes perfect sense. On the other hand, most pagans that I know are far less happy to coexist with the more bigoted and hateful varieties of religion.

There is a strong feminist trend within paganism and this - particularly linked with the ahistorial but often assumed heritage of witchcraft, and the associated history of hanging and burning of witches - does not lead the more patriarchal end of the Abrahamic religions to sit well with a lot of pagans - and I know a lot who are far happier about visiting the roofless moss-covered shell of an abandoned church, with a hawthorn growing in the apse than they are visiting an occupied one (unless it is in search of a sheel-na-gig etc).

On the other hand, there is a strand of Norse paganism that crosses into white supremacy and neo-nazism, so that brings its own hate, bigotry and patriarchy. I do not know what their stance on other religions is.

This was a criticism that the Nazis used against liberal democracies. They saw this as a fatal weakness and used it as a justification for keeping in power themselves, once they had achieved it.

Various dictators have said much the same as well.

However, looking at the track record of democracies vs dictatorships or single party states, I think that the data will show that pluralist democracies typically last longer.

So this is hovering around the -2 votes so far. And I imagine that the downvotes are from people who didn’t watch and were taken in by the title.

If the same thing had been in a four-panel cartoon or a screenshot of text or whatever, it would be raking the upvotes in.

For me, at least, it correlates to the direction that provides the widest/least obstructed/most visibly clear/least disruptive/least hazardous direction to give onward travel. Clearly the direction that that boils down to varies according to the individual situation.

I don’t recall being alone with a single central obstruction in the middle of an otherwise deserted and symmetrical street with no other influencing factors enough times to have noted any innate bias on my part.

There is a great list here.

Also Wild Strawberries (1957).

As in production companies? I’d go for Hammer Films.

What exactly does ‘should’ mean here? Should in order to achieve what?

If you want to know what the word means at the expense of interrupting the flow, then yes.

If you want to stay with the flow, then no.

That said, it is so simple in almost all situations these days to look a definition up that I almost always do on the odd occasions that I find a word I don’t know. And the more you do, the less you will need to in future.

I have only heard of him through the podcast. I’d suggest listening to that. It’s a great series. Or, of course, his actual books are listed on the wiki page.

However, I think that he is saying that we shouldn’t be relying on something that can be and clearly IS being removed or ignored when inconvenient. Maybe, instead, we should be looking at respecting human life just for itself, without cluttering things up with legal language that doesn’t actually add anything.

Personally, I can see where he is coming from, and seldom think or speak in terms of rights myself for much the same reasons. But, either way, however much ignored or misused it is, I don’t think that we can realistically expect anyone who is likely to create exceptions to human rights to have any innate respect for people otherwise.

Until someone comes up with something better, human rights are about the best way of framing the ideas that we have.

In addition to the reasons suggested in several of the comments here so far, the philosopher Giorgio Agamben is extremely critical of the concept of human rights since they are a legal and political construct, and the same legal and political systems are used to create ‘exceptional’ circumstances in which the rights are deemed not to apply to certain groups. Relying on these rights is flawed, in his view, since they will be suspended when most needed. The Philosopize This Podcast did an episode on this just recently.

Fortnight is in routine usage in the UK.

• At work - recruiting another team member, so we are not all constantly plate spinning and I might actually have chance to spend time planning.
• At home - finally getting the pictures etc up on the walls.
• Nationally - voting the Tories out.