Agreed, and I’m not sure it was EVER used that way. I’ve only ever seen it written, and in places where someone wanted to distinguish it from the other codes without giving the impression they were excluding Canadian football. It’s a useful term in the right context, but it’s not “the full name”. Contrast to soccer, where many teams have “Association Football Club” right there in their names as “AFC.”
Per the article, the strike certainly seems to be dramatically affecting the trains, but once people get their cars off the train or ferry, there are long waits for border controls, which of course the British could have avoided altogether by not doing something as stupid as Brexit.
It would require more research than I’m willing to do, but the only part of that article that set off my sports-history-nerd Spidey Sense was this:
In full, it was known as gridiron football, but most people never bothered with the first word.
I don’t know that anyone actually involved in playing or codifying the game ever used “gridiron football” in anything like the same official way that Association football or Rugby football were used. It feels much more like outside observers trying to impose logical categories from afar, British exceptionalism at its finest. AFAIK, gridiron was always used as a nickname for the field, and the sport itself was only ever widely referred to as “football,” American exceptionalism at its finest.
For a while, the governing body in the US was the United State Soccer Football Association, so you’re good, and it’s also some good trolling of the zealots on either side of the “debate.”
This. ‘Soccer’ is well understood and unambiguous, though it might prompt certain assumptions depending on your audience. There are times and places you might prefer to say ‘football’ to mean ‘Association football,’ but if you just need to communicate simple factual information in two syllables, it’s probably the best word for that.
And Australia, at least when they’re not trying to suck up to the British.
Yup. If they leave some minimal process/app that keeps the headsets working with Steam VR, then nothing of value will be lost. It was an underwhelming tech demo and major annoyance.
You can only apply to jobs in European countries.
Sorry, I don’t make the rules.
Then the religion isn’t for you. It’s not for me either. The fact that there are so many hoops to jump through, simply to satisfy the world’s worst library of Bronze and Iron age fanfic nonsense, makes me shake my head at the whole exercise.
The fact remains though, that it’s incredibly important to a lot of people, and if they want to try to square the circle in a way that tends towards justice, then I’m not going to come down hard on them. Pick your battles and whatnot.
Maybe how angsty you were feeling when the internet arrived in your town? I dunno. It feels very appropriate though, that the forgotten gen X would spawn its own even more liminal sub/pseudo group.
One: Hello, fellow Xennial. I’m just a couple of years older than you.
Two: I find we sort of sort ourselves based on life experience, family structure, etc. I have an brother 7 years older than me, so I skew Gen-X. My wife is less than a year younger than me, but she’s the oldest and her parents are a touch younger a d fair bit less traditional than mine, so she skews Millenial.
The generations are a convenient shorthand to discuss broad trends about how certain cultural and economic factors affect the shared experiences of certain cohorts, but they’re pretty silly, especially on the edges. Chronological astrology, really.
Wrong answers only?
Fuzzy
Nurture
Vegan
Morn
Iceman
Sorry, I know I’m outside genre parameters here, but all I can think of is THIS.
And well we should. Honestly, a “torch?” For the electric light that you could easily flash on and off if you wanted or wave around to flash in someone’s eyes?
WHERE IS THE FIRE, NIGEL?!?!? THERE’S NO FIRE!
I just did a quick YT search. It was literally half a second as they were coming back from break and she instantly puts on her BBC anchor face. I wouldn’t even get (more) angry with a Fox News or RT presenter for doing what she did. No biggie at all.
I like The Orville. I’ve watched the entire run of the show. Much like you with LD though, I don’t quite get how people love The Orville. It strikes me as leftover TNG episodes with a Find and Replace, followed by a liberal coat of Seth MacFarlane’s very particular set of Gen X influences. The morality is often pretty clumsy and I can almost imagine Seth and the writers being frustrated by the ambiguity that a good Trek episode can leave you with. Then, the way it had to start with a more Galaxy quest vibe to get a show order from Fox, followed by Seth wanting it to be more serious but also still be a Seth show, it’s kind of all over the place. I also find some of the acting performances to be amateurish to the point of distraction.
And for all that, I still like it. It scratched an itch and has a lot of heart. On the whole, it’s more than the sum of its parts, but for me it still has a ceiling. I like it about as much as I like Discovery, which I have also watched in its entirety though only once. The two shows’ issues are very different though, with the exception of tonal whiplash.
I have come around on LD. I think it is a similar love letter to to Gen2 Star Trek but handles the balance of trek-to-humor better, and for all their cartoon antics, I’ve found the characters more compelling than The Orville’s.
That’s the funny thing. As far as I know, you’re completely right. I am not seriously tuned in or anything, but talking to my father-in-law and my wife’s cousin (both Punjab-born Sikhs and no strangers to taking pride in their identities) as well as sort of generally keeping up with the basics in the news, the sense I get is that “Khalistan” as a movement very much peaked in the 1980s with Operation Blue Star, the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the subsequent riots, and culminating in the Air India bombing in 1985. Since then, it’s been a slow erosion as Indian identity has stabilized, as the democracy became a bit more robust (seriously being tested now), and Sikhs felt better integrated into the country. The idea of being effectively a weak buffer state between India and Pakistan just sort of loses its charm when the population doesn’t feel desperately repressed. The first Sikh PM was even a member of the Gandhis’ Congress Party. The diaspora is doing well, and in many western countries Sikhs serve as useful, informal cultural ambassadors for the nation of India.
Many Sikhs even supported the Modi and the BJP at first, but as the Hindu nationalists find success in oppressing Muslims, suddenly there are more voices that the Sikhs in Punjab need to be brought to heel as well, or at least that their concerns are unimportant and do not need to be addressed. Even still, most of the loud separatist voices are outside of Punjab and couching most of their rhetoric in peaceful terms, and the drive for any serious resistance remains fringe. Modi et al are fanning tiny embers of resistance that would normally be unlikely to cause great harm to India or the world. If they don’t stop shooting straw men, they’re going to create the exact problem they claim to be trying to fight.
Maybe I’m a little pollyannaish, but I tend to think that the generations growing up with this stuff will grow around it and configure their social expectations and will settle into rhythms that work as well for them as older generations’ environments did for them. It will look weird to olds, but I always wonder if we’re looking back at the “good ol’ days,” and projecting our own reactions to the changes onto the generations that will take them in stride and make sarcastic wanking gestures at us when we complain.
Pamphlets/Newpapers/Films/Radio/TV/Video Games/Internet/Social Media will all rot your brain and subject you to misinformation and leave you depressed at how you must interact with the world, depending on when you were born and when you are speaking. Not to say there are not unique challenges to each in turn, or that some periods don’t end up worse than others, but I just don’t think our kids are going to treat the world and each other THAT much worse than all their ancestors have, and if they do I’m not sure it is uniquely social media’s fault. There are many things worth knowing about the social impact of new tech, and perspectives that the experienced can offer, especially in transitional eras while it’s new. I just don’t think think doomer handwringing or trying to put genies back into bottles is a good use of anyone’s collective time.
So, in the linked complaint (not a full lawsuit yet, btw), they cite “breakage” where Starbucks corporate makes an estimate each year as to the amount of banked gift cards they reasonably believe will never be spent. It looks like it has averaged about $185M in the last few years. This can be moved from deferred revenue to actual, and thereby improve the financials. This could theoretically be fucked with on the margins and allow execs to pocket more money, and to some extent it obviously encourages Starbucks to promote gift cards (in the broad sense) over other payment methods.
The whole complaint is odd. Starbucks obviously feels like they have a winner in this scheme, and almost everything alleged in the complaint is kinda fucky, to the point that I think it’s worth pointing out as a consumer protection issue. That said, the individual impact on any one consumer is very small and there are numerous workarounds for a slightly motivated person, and the tone of the complaint comes off kinda like pearl-clutching and paternalistic. Maybe you have to write it that way to make sure it’s taken seriously, but it’s not making for very persuasive reading.