2) I've been in jury deliberations twice. This was far more damaging to my faith in our justice system.

This is the main reason why most other Western countries dropped the death penalty decades ago. This particular case is not a very convincing argument against the death penalty due to the severity of the crime and the killings that were carried out during the pursuit, leaving no reasonable doubt that they got the right guy. But many other cases in the US, some which eventually get overturned in the many appeals a death row prisoner is entitled to, and others such as Carlos De Lunas which have slipped through.

If a tree explodes in the forest...

...and you happen to have a mirror handy, you might just catch it's light echoes.

Either you're one of those super-privileged people who live close to the center of London and Paris, or you need to add 1-2h at either end to get from your suburb to the high speed rail station.

A lot of suburban London is within 30 minutes of central London. Suburbs further out just have faster trains. I used to live outside the M25, and had a 23 minute non-stop journey, with a train every 10 minutes at peak times.

Have you ever seen init scripts?

I'm still trying to get over the upgrade to systemd, you insensitive clod!

am I supposed to ignore GNOME's outstanding interface designs?

Which ones would those be?

GNOME 2 had some good ideas.