Zompist Bboard Again

Have they suddenly gotten the yips when it comes to propaganda and lost their knack for converting people? They haven't, to my knowledge, lost their knack of converting angry Brexit voters¹ who feel like immigration² is the problem and like they don't have much to lose, only there's a somewhat limi...

In a twist apparently noöne expected, Catherine West, the Labour MP for a part of London near Starmer's own constituency and former junior minister, has just announced she'll try and start a Labour party leadership election¹ if no cabinet minister does by Monday. Apparently this has taken most Labou...

Don’t put the cart before the horse, as they say. There has been a tremendous increase in Reform councilors, it is true; but that doesn’t necessary translate to them being ‘in power’ if there are more councilors from other parties, as appears to be the case. Based on my reading of social media at l...

b) have a completely different party system. Oh? Oh, where do I start? Northern Irish politics is almost completely oriented around the sectarian/constitutional¹ axis. There are 5-and-a-bit main parties in Northern Ireland. Traditionally, it was a roughly two party system between the the UUP² (unio...

The BBC have now published their projected national voteshare for Great Britain¹². Note how the total voteshare for left wing parties sums to >53%³ and the right to 43%, but this isn't reflected well in seats because of Our Wonderful Voting System™⁴⁶. ¹ Extrapolation and votes-at-local-elections-don...

Horrible news yesterday. Local elections have swept the far right into power across the country. No. Reform currently have control of 2 English councils more than they did before, and the majority of councils are not under their control. We are still waiting for the parliamentary elections in Scotl...

For stop assimilation, pʰəɢəwa first changes to pʰɢəwa as expected, but the stop assimilation rule doesn't turn pʰ to b , rather it gives me � . To solve this problem, you need to change the stop assimilation rules to the following: ;stop assimilation [Svcd Svla Svca] / [Svcl Svcl Svcl] / _ Svcl [S...

Something which, of course, only occurred to me when I switched my computer off: we depend on oil for a lot more things than just petrol; where would we get our plastics from, for example? And I hear a lot about how much essential fertilizer comes from the Middle East; would this trigger a change i...

I just wanted to say, I've been enjoying seeing you gradually work out how to make this family work, and replacing and moving bits between revisions, and this installment is no exception.

So if -en isn’t a morpheme, then what is it? A syllable, part of a single morpheme. I don't see much difference between "sleep" / "slept" or "go" / "went" on the one hand, and "write" / "written" on the other, with regards to phonemic anal...

Regarding the recent supreme court ruling, my understanding is that most countries do not allow the courts to nullify laws, only to rule whether they've been followed or violated. It seems like the US is unusual in giving greater weight to court rulings than decisions of the legislature. Is that an...

Maybe the Right Honourable Member for the Falkland Islands can teleconference from there to the House of Commons, or conversely teleconference with constituents from London. The latter's what's done for Clacton. Wait, Nigel Farage has enough interest in his constituents to speak to them, albeit rem...

Man in Space wrote: ↑Tue Apr 28, 2026 7:44 pm

Ooh, very nice. I always like a nice explanatory Twin Aster post.

Twice, surely? There on Sunday and back on Thursday. No, because in return for representing such a remote location the Member would be given special SoopaPowaz to teleport back. Maybe the Right Honourable Member for the Falkland Islands can teleconference from there to the House of Commons, or conv...

I'm not sure why they can't be regularised into devolved nations with representation in parliament I'd love to see the Right Honourable Member for the Falkland Islands flying 100 degrees of latitude once a week to attend Parliament. Twice, surely? There on Sunday and back on Thursday. (And yes, thi...

(Talking only about Britain here because it's what I know best) Yeah, the Chagos islands case is frustrating¹, but there is definitely some surprise in certain quarters that the Commonwealth doesn't want to do whatever we say, despite our wonderful shared history, and are even asking for reparations...

Thanks everyone who replied! While people have been good at explaining what a (past) imperfect ive is, the specific term ‘imperfect’¹ is a lot more confusing. It was originally used for a specific Latin tense that happened to mostly match a past imperfective, and then got borrowed across Europe for...

I know the West is allied with some dictators. Is Nayib Bukele one of them or not? Trump seems allied with him. What about Europe? I think European support for minor Third World dictators is more a matter of things like Françafrique , which itself is/was mostly a French thing (hence the name) even ...

þeprussianfrog wrote: ↑Sat Apr 25, 2026 11:51 am At least for me it doesn't run properly on older Windows.

What went wrong?

I know the West is allied with some dictators. Is Nayib Bukele one of them or not? Trump seems allied with him. What about Europe? I believe the answer is ‘couldn't care that much about what the leader of a tiny Central American country is doing.’ Given his reputation, approval will depend on wheth...