Earhartsplane - Hello

I hadn't played Disco Elysium when I first read this so re-reading it now feels like bonus content.

Discworld Elysium Masterpost

Since I can't edit polls to retroactively link parts together, here's a masterpost of them all, updated as it happens.

Vote to solve a thrilling mystery of assassination and intrigue, or at least to eventually discover if the body in front of you is actually dead or not, that bit has been taking us a while.

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

PART 4

PART 5

PART 6

PART 7

PART 8

part 8.5 alternate universe pain edition

PART 9 active pol

Been super busy with lifeTM and have been listening to @malevolentcast  lately, so just had to sketch a bit today during our dnd session since who knows when I have any time the next time otl

season 2 jon amirite

So, Gabriel Attal somehow took a clear-ish position against the far-right. Truly, we live in an age of miracles.

The Prime Minister said that not one vote should go to the RN. In circonscriptions where their candidate is third, they should quit in favor of "another candidate who, like us, defends the values ​​of the Republic".

This is, overall, good news. The government has managed to talk about the far-right without making any references to what they call the far-left. What worries me is that they haven't clearly said that any NFP candidate is a better choice than an RN candidate.

Candidates have until Tuesday to confirm their candidacy. I truly hope that everyone will keep it together for a week, eat crows and desist when necessary, and that on Sunday we will achieve the best result possible, which is mediocre.

Mediocre is better than far-right. Many can survive mediocre who couldn't survive far-right. Final verdict is next Sunday, and until then, everyone, good luck and goodnight.

So while we wait to see how low we've slid on this slippery slope, I thought I'd give a primer on how legislative elections work in France.

The first thing to know is that it's more like 577 local elections. In order to be elected, a candidate has to win in the circonscription in which they were campaigning.

The second thing to know is that in order to win on the first round of the election, a candidate must have at least 50% of the votes AND 25% of those registered. This means that if, as has happened in La Martinique, a candidate has 63% of the votes but the turn-out was low (estimated around 25%, which is low but higher than it was in the last election), they still get a second round.

Now, for the second round. Are qualified 1. The candidate who had the most votes and 2. Any candidate that had 12,5% of those registered to vote. Once again, this means that the turn-out is a factor in who gets to participate in the second round. It also means that it is possible for a second round to have a "triangulaire", that is to say 3 candidates in the second round (technically, it means that it's possible to have four candidates).

At time of writing, it is estimated that between 65 and 85 representatives have been elected on the first round, and that there will be between 285 and 315 triangulaires (based on the data given by Le Monde, which is based on Ipsos data). Out of 577 seats. This means that in a lot of circonscriptions, there will most probably be one RN candidate, one NFP candidate and one candidate from the presidential party.

On the left, several political leaders have already announced that if their candidates arrived third and a RN candidate was qualified for the second round, they would give up the election and encourage people to vote for whoever else was qualified.

And now the big question: will the presidential party do the same? Gabriel Attal, the Prime Minister, is expected to talk to the press tonight. I, personally, will be drinking and obsessively refreshing the news page.

The fact that in the year of our lord 2019 Aziraphale didn't know know what an answering machine was tells me that he hasn't called anyone else in his entire life.

I cannot express how disappointed I am in the fact that the link to [Elliot, 2025] doesn't work. And that the paper was an April's Fool. Elliot please share the joke with me I want to know what's the Elamo-Minoan hypothesis.

University really is about looking at the worst pdf known to man huh

Today's bird is this white breasted nuthatch!

A recent cartoon for New Scientist

The insanity of French politics in the last few days is re-kindling a deeply buried instinct to start a podcast.

I am happy to inform the public that there is a dataset of hair salons with puns in their name. It's all in French, but I can only applaud the effort and I hope that one day, similar work will be done for coffee shops, if only to simplify the work of authors wanting to check whether or not something is taken.

data.gouv.fr

Coordonnées des enseignes de Coiffure comportant des jeux de mots cocasses dans leur appellation - data.gouv.fr

Ce jeu de données contient, au format geoJSON, les…

Names include such gems as Faudra Tiff Hair, United Hair Lines, Lucif'hair, No Peigne No Gain, and my personal favorite, Queer Chevelu.