Really we should be asking (I want to know) why FEMA invented their own USAR standards instead of adopting the INSARAG ones? Why the US have put so much more money into USAR and not flood and storm response? Surely after Harvey and Katrina, not to mention tornadoes, you’ve learned that having something like Australia’s SESs would provide you with surge capacity of people skilled in storm damage mitigation and flood rescue? I really would like to know

Well, poor black people at least

People getting brake and break mixed up annoys me, but I get it. If this is you, your car has brakes and you take a break from work after breaking your arm.

Like… a water tank?

1 in 1000 year events are poorly named. One because it describes a likelihood, so this storm had a 0.1% chance of occurring in any given year, so we’d expect to see a storm like this once every thousand years on average. It’s not cyclical. Two, the likelihood of these storms is steadily increasing and so it’s probably no longer a 1 in 1000 year event.

Almost certainly not. It’s common in some communities for people to write their own image transcriptions.

None of them, they all grow it in their backyards or harvest it in the wild

I doubt Trump’s followers will think of this as a breach of their 2A rights. They will likely think that it’s black people and bad actors who will have their guns taken for the safety of the boys in blue.

I say “look it up”. Applies to lots of forms of search, be it google, DDG, YouTube, Wikipedia, a dictionary, a manual, pretty much anything.

The yellow and black flag is the ancap (anarcho-capitalist) flag. The rattlesnake is a libertarian icon and says “don’t step on me”. Bitcoin was built out of a libertarian idea that the government was to blame for the 2008 GFC because they somehow regulated the banks too much, so a decentralized digital currency was the best way to get around that regulation. ETA: the black and white US flag with the blue stripe is the “thin blue line” flag, flown by supporters of the police, typically a symbol used by the right wing of America. The three interlocking triangles form the valknut, a symbol used by ancient Germanic people’s, and currently used by people who identify with Germany and the Vikings; white supremacists make up a large group who fit this description.

The red and black flag is an anarchist flag, a combination of two older anarchist flags: the black flag and the red flag. The ancap flag is descended from this one, replacing the red with gold (because gold is a very old and widely used form of currency, and money good, government bad). The purple and black one is the anarcha-feminst flag, and they also use the pink and black flag, but it’s primarily seen as the queer anarchist flag. I’m sure I don’t need to explain the LGBT+ flag. All Cops Are Bastards (ACAB) is a popular slogan amongst anarchists because cops are the strong arm of the state, and as such Black Lives Matter is a movement that a lot of anarchists strongly identify with and support.

Spot on!

Worse still is the pronunciation of “bologna”. How. Just how. None of you seppos have the right to tell me about how I pronounce “herbs” or “pecans”. Then again, our pronunciation of “lieutenant” is messed up.

This time it isn’t (I think)

I feel like Australia did this to the field hockey world. North-western European countries like Norway and Denmark seem to love the sport, but we had the top spot for quite a few years. Barely anyone in Australia gave a single shit. Because everyone plays soccer, rugby, cricket or Aussie rules. Kinda sucked as a hockey player.

I highly recommend Science Vs, 99% Invisible, and Cautionary Tales. Pretty good if you’re into nerdy stuff. I also recommend Endless Thread if you’re interested in stories about the internet. What audiobooks have you enjoyed recently?

Nominative determinism: destiny based on names

I thought everyone was overreacting until I used Google on the computers at my college and I realised that DDG had been insulating me from all that horror. Thank goodness I switched when I did.

It’s funny you reversed your game controls since, as a lefty, I have adapted to default controls pretty easily. Never even crossed my mind to change them. Definitely lateral thinking on your part.

Australian white ibises. They’re kinda like the Australian equivalent to a raccoon in the US; they eat rubbish and their roosts stink because they tend to congregate in a single tree and then shit everywhere. But they are quite unique looking birds: long beaks, black heads and white plumage. So the tourists find them quite interesting and the locals call them bin chickens.

/ˈkwestʃɘn/