General News Thread

[RoydGolden]

Stop the...

...What? Giving people advice?

[Arashi_Leonhart]

pssst, he's making a joke about trailing off...

[SeiKeo]

As for trailing off, it's a habit. I might want to add something later on and it might continue from where I left. Certainly not all that different than not adding a period at all. But I've only seen children leave commas unused...

Usually children at the level where they can use grammar can also tell the difference between a comma and an apostrophe, which was clearly fat-fingered at the same time as pressing return out of habit. Anyways, you have actually provided the reason why the ellipses overuse is a bad habit: writing is never going to be convincing if you yourself never sound sure of what you are going to say - which is the effect of the trailing ellipses

[Seika]

I like the crazy British way of the PM being overnight some random MP who you probably have never heard of.

Strangely, it's because we prefer our head of government to be less monarchical than yours is.

[SeiKeo]

Yes, as it turns out that was the original sin of American constitutional design, but we'll see if we can keep working with it for a few more decades.

[Seika]

Oh no, your consitution has many more sins than that.

[Raylen Cypher]

Oh no, your consitution has many more sins than that.

Do tell, I'm honestly curious to hear/see a different perspective.

[SeiKeo]

Do tell, I'm honestly curious to hear/see a different perspective.

The trope is actually the original sin as slavery, but it's a fairly tired trope, and we managed to solve that one so we're on new and better problems now, like how to stop the black hole of power agglomeration that is the presidency.

e: as a fun exercise, name the last president to enact a net reduction in the power of his own office. The most recent you could argue is Nixon, and that is both extremely arguable as to whether it was a net reduction, and entirely accidental.

[Seika]

Do tell, I'm honestly curious to hear/see a different perspective.

That's just me amusing myself with Leo. I am by no means informed enough nor politically astute enough to actually try to critique the U.S. Constitution.

Inasmuch as I'd offer anything, it would be nothing more than the instinctive British suspicion of formal "constitutions" in principle, and of the originalist strain too-often found in American politics in particular. Civic settlements should be adaptable, not ironclad, and hero-worshipping the Founding Fathers is both detrimental to the exercise of democracy and rather creepy.

[SeiKeo]

If you made me pick a #2 problem, I suspect there's a problem with how SCOTUS relates to the Constitution, where its wide authority disincentives normal amendment procedure. Depending on how you want to think about significance, the last truly significant amendment was 1951 or 1920; if you compare that to how our understanding of Constitutional rights has evolved over the same period, I hardly need to point out the massive disparity. And this power going to SCOTUS is a key factor in the ossification of American institutions.

e: so yes, obviously, civic sentiment is not ironclad, and historically it's been anything but. But the method in which we move it these days is concentrated in the hands of the victors and in less democratic sections of the government.

[2Bad]

Meanwhile our historic centralization process has not stopped the legislature from hampering our national executive whenever it can. See: his inability to actually fill our judicial vacancy.

[Five_X]

I'd be quite pleased, in a way, if the two biggest parties in the UK were both headed by women.

[Five_X]

On completely unrelated news...

http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-cze...-idUKKCN0ZH59T

WE WON LADS

[Seika]

Something of a shame the Ruth Davidson rumours didn't work out. It would have seemed appropriate if the Tories, having given us gay marriage, gave us the first PM in a gay marriage.

(The fact that this can be said of our small-and-big C conservative party still gives me a bit of a hope for British tolerance).

[Strife ❤️]

[black1blade]

People have been making the high sparrow=jeremy corbin joke since the start right, I know I sure have.

[2Bad]

I've never seen or heard "Czechia" in my life

[Skull]

Snip

I would probably laugh if I actually watched Game of Thrones.

[Five_X]

I've never seen or heard "Czechia" in my life

You're not embracing your Germanic cultural heritage enough, mein Herr.

[Skull]

I've never seen or heard "Czechia" in my life

Same here, though I've only ever typed out "Czech Republic" once in my life so I guess I never bothered to look for a shorthand name.