I have idiot neighbors that set off roman candles underneath low hanging trees.

Your answer is here

I'm thinking the Wormfaces in "Have Space Suit, Will Travel"

I am SO tempted to try to write this now...

Sigh... nobody remembers Tom Lehrer and New Math!

He's just thinking in base 8. Remember, base 8 is just like base 10... if you're missing two fingers!

The cops don't like it if you have an Open Container either... at least in CA.

You seem to be verifying what I said.

There is a serious difference between saying negative things to/about someone and being rude. Learning that is one of the things that happens as people grow up.

Telling someone to their face that you don't like them does not show that you have anything other than a severe lack of tact. That is not honesty. At times, it can be straightforward stupidity.

There are very few people that I/we loathe. There are certainly plenty around that I would rather be somewhere else than next to but that is not the same thing. Loathing implies a wish to harm. One of the last times this country wished anyone harm, our prime minister obediently followed your president into Iraq. That was one of the most amazingly stupid things ever done by a British leader in centuries. We are now living with the consequences. I want us to go back to not loathing as soon as possible!

As for the empire, my ancestors gave it back to the peoples that their ancestors had taken it from. On the whole, we are still on good terms with most of them.

Something that has been in the news a few times is how some places are better to live than others.
I regularly see people from the USA strongly disputing this. How can anywhere possibly be better to live than the US? You have your Constitution, various amendments and some of you have a lot of money.

If this is right, perhaps it is to do with manners. So often your countryfolk seem brusque at best and just plain rude a lot of the time. This is definitely not all of you and not everyone in Denmark and Bhutan are amazingly polite at all times. What is evident though is that rudeness can be taken as a badge of honour in some places. In others politeness is seen as the target.

Example: A couple of years ago, I was taking part in a discussion about the treatment of transgender people. My attitude is that if someone has gone through all "that process", it is just good manners to call them what they want to be. This was taken by some that I am somewhere in the LGBTIQ... spectrum. I'm not. I'm straight white Northern European but also a (usually) polite Brit.

It would be interesting to compare where is supposed to be good and bad places to live with their local norms of politeness.

Black holes are where God divided by zero.

Should five per cent appear too small
Be thankful I don't take it all
'Cause I'm the taxman
Yeah, I'm the taxman

Except that management will have nobody to train the newbies. Hilarity ensues!

Fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency.... and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.

"Pirating" meaning "watching TV". Or recording it.

We used to call it a VCR. We could record anything we wanted. And we weren't "pirates", a term that used to mean SELLING copyrighted content, usually in physical form. Which is still done at dealer tables in conventions all over the US, and no one is trying to take those people to prison.

I could repeat my points of the last, oh, sixteen years warning of definition drift and the removal of the right to record something happening on a screen in front of you. But, the liars won and now watching and recording TV is illegal unless the "owners" control your TV and, well, everything else connected to it. Encrypted BIOSes, HDCP, all the crap that has taken over what once was just watching TV and turned it into a worldwide ubercrime, a Prohibition III nightmare that is never going to end.

Emacs isn't an IDE. It's an OS. The only thing it lacks is a decent text editor...