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I blame the weird 90's TV show I watched as a kid, but this one always makes me nod my head and grin like an idiot.

[Sinitrena - 4]

And the ending is that Meara eats the cake, therefore poisoning herself unknowingly (also: unknowingly to Granny - only the reader should be aware of this.)

That's how I read it, too, and I both hate the granny for her carelessness and I hate the story for turning such childish innocence into something so twisted and cruel. :C

Oh, but our voting deadline is also at its end!
Math is not my strong suite, but I'm fairly sure I managed it without error this time. The score is:

Slice of Life by Sinitrena - 4

Out of the Frying Pan by Baron - 3

The Exit Ramp For Home by Mandle - 2

Now have a cookie (unpoisoned) for being good sports, and I look forward to the next fortnight!

[Sinitrena]

Best use of a frying pan or other cooking tool: Sinitrena, for the rich and detailed depiction of some truly mouthwatering baking.
Best overall story: Baron, for the colourful set of characters and motivations, and a final line that made me smile. (Though Sinitrena was very close here, I must admit!)
Best technical writing: Sinitrena, for despite the colourful languages used by others, I could find no flaw or stumbling in this text.

I shall join you. I will come over with the vodka. We will need it. Surströmming is a delight if you are sufficiently drunk. Which we will need to be if the Trumpet comes back for more.

I'll welcome the company, but I have to leave the drinking to you. I don't touch that stuff myself. 

From what I've seen after that Kevin Sorbo started starring mostly in Evangelical Christian propaganda films made for right-wing Americans.

Eh, not my cup of tea, but a job is a job. Nothing wrong with that as far as I'm aware.

Also: how is some random dudes opinions on twitter any less derailing from the topic of Trump than anything else discussed here?

Oh, hey, he used to be Hercules in that show I loved as a kid! Neat!

Not sure what point you are trying to make here? This "story in 4 tweets" lacks a lot of detail and context, and says precious little about what the author meant by each tweet.
If read as malicious, this person is calling for outright murder of lawmakers.
If read cautiously, this person is hoping to see some historical change of attitudes and a newfound fellowship between people.

My guess is the truth is somewhere between the two extremes, a case of hopeless optimism and then, at the end, denial of facts to avoid having to accept the difficult reality of what actually happened.

Or do some of you know this person directly, and have discussed the matter with them and thus have some further insight into their thought process?
I feel like we keep seeing people take tiny tweets, restricted in content and context, and use them as weapons to "prove" the people they dislike to be evil and thus free game for some sort of retaliation or harm, though hopefully I am wrong here.

As with all vaccines, despite the rigorous testing, we'll also have to wait and see what the real effect on general populace is. Just yesterday the news here pointed out that Brazilian studies found the Chinese vaccine was 51% effective, far lower than the Chinese research had indicated, and just barely over the 50% required to be approved for use. If the actual effective rates among the population, as well as the time the vaccination is effective, are lower than hoped then herd immunity may be quite a bit of time away.

Still, in my eye this should only encourage more people to take the vaccine, in order to provide better data and understanding to the scientific community beyond that which their own tests can ever hope to achieve.

Please don't take the drastic action of eating a whole tin of Surstromming, if things go horribly wrong.

I am a man of my word, dammit! My life may now rely on Donald Trump doing something sensible.

Oh Gods, I am dead, aren't I?

However, it would appear that  if this does take place, he will never be able to run for office again. Whew!

I've seen contradictory reporting on that. He might be able to run if not removed by the senate, at least, though I think it's going to be irrelevant. He may be dumb as a brick, but I doubt even he will want to take a second round of what he's been through.
If Trump is the leading Republican candidate in 2024, I will eat a whole tin of surströmming (and probably die).

[The Exit Ramp For Home]

Why didn't I make this post yesterday? No idea...

The deadline for writing hath ended! 'tis time to read and to vote.

Our competing stories are:


The Exit Ramp For Home by Mandle

Slice of Life by Sinitrena

Out of the Frying Pan by Baron


And as a reminder, the voting categories, in which you may award one point per category, are as follows:

- Best use of a frying pan or other cooking tool
- Best overall story
- Best technical writing

The reading and voting deadline is 16th of January 23:59:59 UTC (so the winner has Sunday to start us off into next fortnight)

I thought that pharmacies can't be used for vaccination due to the risk of anaphylactic shock?
At least afaik here it is only done in hospital/other medical centers with doctors around.

That might vary from country to country, or maybe different vaccinations require different prep?
I mean we get a nurse to come in and jab us at the office for the seasonal flue shots and such, and I expect that will be the case with the Covid vaccine too, once it gets out to general distribution.

Considering how good the track record is for vaccinations in general, I'd say go for it, get the jab. The risks are tiny and the potential gains are immense, although I also have to point out how massively optimistic a lot of people are with this thing. "Back to normal by June!" is a bit of an overstatement due to the availability and distribution of the vaccine, but phrases like that are repeated by media and politicians alike because it's what people want to hear.

It's actually kind of eerie to see people in elevated risk groups, especially the older folks on a medical peer support group on Facebook I'm in, boasting how they would "never take the jab" like it's some kind of accomplishment to be proud of. Same people are telling others to not take it, without any reason really given as to why other than "well I won't, so you shouldn't either". We had one vaccine with more than usual complications with the swine flu epidemic, and ever since then it seems the very word vaccination has become a curse in some circles.

It's true to say the electoral college is not working as intended (though its idea still stands). Its power and purpose is greatly diminished, and it is up to the US government, elected by its people, to fix things one way or the other. Whether that means restoring independence and power to it, or disassembling the system and replacing it with a direct vote, both have arguments for and against. The issue with that, however, comes back to an ill-informed and disinterested populace, with a vast majority of Americans not even knowing what the Electoral College is or how it works. To such a voterbase it would be quite difficult for politicians to campaign on changing the system, outside of generic "drain the swamp" claims as made by Trump. People want a change, they just don't know what kind of change or why or how.

The two party system also gives the US the look of a failed democracy, with each and every vote resulting in nearly half of the population not being catered to. Meanwhile in still functioning multi party democracies you can still get 70%+ support for initiatives and far more than 52% of voter support for the elected government.

Speaking of US colleges, there's that whole system with the electoral college. From what I've read, Hillary actually got 3 million more votes from the total population, but Trump won the vote in more different US states,
which just goes to show how antiquated and out of touch most of their political system is. Land doesn't vote, people do.

Except if you look at the history and purpose of the electoral college, you'll find that it's doing pretty much exactly what it was designed to do, and a major reason for it being there is, again, the fact that the US is basically 50 countries. The size and scope, along with the varied interests between different states, pretty much necessitates a system like the electoral college to at least try and keep a few densely populated states controlling all of the more sparsely controlled ones.

Going by some map I saw a few days ago, the US actually is among the leading countries in percentage of the population with one university degree (or more).

And India produces the highest number of software engineers per year.
The number of graduates alone doesn't tell the whole story, and this is especially the case in the US which is, as said, 50 countries wearing a trench coat. One has to consider things like which states have those degrees, how are they distributed, what kinds of degrees they are and what kind of merit and credentials do the schools granting them have. A high number of graduates means nothing if the quality of education is down in the dumps.

I'm not claiming education is the ONLY cause or ONLY solution. It's a notable one, though. The topic of how to get a nation with a history of division, built-into-the-very-system racism and an actual civil war fought in large part over this very matter is not something I can easily cover in a single forum post, as it's a topic entire academic papers, studies and books have been written about. One fact to consider is that we are talking about changing how people think, and that will take generations to happen. Any attempt to force people to change their thinking and beliefs in an instant is, as we've seen in the US, liable to cause a major backlash that might get a populist president elected or do some other great harm to the greater society in the end (and hell, I'm saying this as a person who still thinks Trump was better than Clinton by a wide margin). It's a change that happens slowly, over time, as new better educated generations with a better understanding of the world replace the old, and can only be accomplished if the underlying systems of law, justice, education and governance act as a suitable bed for such a change, rather than a system that enforces the old style of thinking.

In the US there appears to be some deeply rooted racial discrimination and issues they really need to deal with. The fact that the country has a subset of populace still clinging to the idea of blacks as second-class citizens speaks volumes of the low level of education in some areas, and I have a feeling it might well play a major role in driving the unrest in the country in general. There appears to also be a range of attempts to "fix" the issue that appear foolish to me at best, such as granting blacks preferential treatment in areas of higher education, where merit and ability should be the key factors, not skin colour. Then again, the US has a long history of making a wide range of questionable policies based on race.

This is a rather uneducated read on the situation, however. I know several Americans and have discussed the topics with them, learning from them, along with reading history and news, but I am by no means an expert on American politics or racial history. The above is just a short version of how I see American racial politics as they are playing out today.

Sure, I know what you mean! I suppose I'll leave it up to WHAM if he wants to clarify.

I am a proponent for equal opportunity in western societies, but not for the enforcement of equal outcome.
South Africa is a state I am not well familiar with, so I can't really say much on it. All I know the history there is a bloody mess in every sense of the word.

Oh, if I could stop the holocaust, I'd be far more active and far less "cool headed". Turns out it happened long before I was born, so I've very little I can do about it other than study, understand and learn from it. Hell, I've walked through that iron "Arbeit Macht Frei" gate and see the memorials in person.
The thing we have to understand is that we are talking of history here, not current day events, and the US presidential elections aren't exactly world-ending matters outside of certain political and media circles in the US.

As someone else already pointed out in this very thread, the impact of the US on a global scale is diminishing and the rest of the world needs to think for themselves, rather than cling to cold war era ideas of the US always being there to rescue us from the next crisis.