The very second sentence of that Wikipedia page says that common law is built on precedent.

OK, here’s a breakdown from me, a person who is not remotely a lawyer. I’ll be using the most common names for things; they might be called something different in your country.

The highest form of law is the Constitution. A Constitution is a sort of meta-law which defines what parliament can and can’t do. If a law contradicts the Constitution, it’s invalid. Because the Constitution is so important, changing it normally requires a referendum. Not every country has a Constitution; Britain is notorious for lacking one.

Below the Constitution is statute law. This is where the parliament writes a new law, which can and often does override existing law. The president (or monarch if your country really needs to get with the times) usually has the power to veto any act of parliament, but it’s vanishingly rare they will do so except in cases where the new law is unconstitutional.

Common law refers to clarifications on existing laws made by judges, who are supposed to be Lawful Neutral on such matters. For example, let’s say parliament successfully passed a law requiring people to wear hats outside. If I see my Sikh neighbour wearing a turban, I would report him to the cops for failure to wear a hat. In court, my neighbour’s lawyer argues that, based in IRS shape and function, a turban is a type of hat. The judge agrees, and rules that my neighbour did not violate the hat law, and so I need to pay all the legal fees.

Now, whenever somebody reports a Sikh for failure to wear a hat, lawyers will cite the case of Me vs My Neighbour, wherein it was determined that a turban counts as a hat. Precedent is important, because if we’re going to have laws, they are supposed to apply consistently to everybody. It’s no good if getting to wear a turban depends on the whim of the cops or the judge that day.

Parliament can, of course, change the rules by making a new law which defines ‘hat’ in such a way that does not include turbans. Under the new law, people could be prosecuted for wearing turbans without hats, if they do so after the new law comes into force.

The living space features three bedrooms and 3 1/2 baths and a detached guest house.

Price sounds about normal for San Francisco Bay. The more interesting question is why it has half a bath.

“Biblically accurate” angels refers to the Four Living Creatures who surround the throne of God in Ezekiel and Revelation. One is a lion, one us an oz, one is a human, and one is an eagle. They all have multiple wings, four faces, and eyes everywhere.

Contrary to popular belief, the Four Living Creatures are four specific cherubs and are not representative of angels as a whole. Most angels just look like humans; indeed, in Revelation, they are accompanied by 24 angels who are indistinguishable from humans.

It should also be noted that Ezekiel and Revelation are trippy as fuck, quite unlike the rest of the Biblical canon.

Let’s not forget that Trump has been attacking Iran since his first term. In November 2018, he unilaterally reäpplied sanctions, violating the antinuclear treaty, despite Iran appearing to have been fulfilling their end of the bargain. As Britain and France desperately tried to get the treaty back on track, Trump had Qassem Solameini assassinated in early 2020. That would have been the biggest news of the year, and likely would have led to a full-on war with Iran, if we didn’t all have to go into lockdown a few months later.

People say this is a distraction from the Epstein files, but I doubt that is more than a minor factor. Trump has had it in for Iran for years. The far more likely conspiracy is that he wants a war so he can declare martial law and be president for life. Even so, what’s more likely is that Trump is doing fascist action for the sake of action.

Have a popular, wildly successful YouTube channel with slickly-edited videos. The second-lwbel handshake is to be personal friends or professional collaborators with somebody already in Nebula.

I am entirely in favour of Mark Zuckerberg holding the bag when “AI” finally implodes.

I lament that I have but one upvote to give.

At one point, Frankie made a fake boyfriend out of rags, but it later came to life and was incredibly socially awkward.

I am Frankie’s fake boyfriend.

Reminds me of an infamous videom from the late 2000so about the quality of fansubs at the time. The guy made the case that the issues Horii describes can be overcome, but require careful word choices.

For example, consider “Just who the hell do you think I am!?” vs “May I enquire as to who you think I might be?” In Japanese, the difference is in which word they use for “I”, which the English translation gets across with word choices.

Switch 2s are cheaper in America than the Eurozone and the EU aren’t putting any new tariffs on Japan or Viernam, so they haven’t increased prices to account for tariffs. They pulled this off by getting a whole lot of Switch 2s into America before tariffs came into force.

Sad thing is all these companies near certainly passed most of the costs onto consumers, and consumers almost certainly will see none of the refunds.

FWIW, Nintendo didn’t (because they got a bunch of Switch 2s into America before tariffs came into force).

Doom Eternal.

I like the original trilogy, adored Doom 2016, and I even thought Doom 3 was a decent game in its own right. So a direct sequel to Doom Eternal where Heaven gets involved and everybody says is bigger and better? Sign me the fuck up!

I bought the game and all the DLC. I played through to the end and beat the final boss, and I did not enjoy one second of it (I only finished because I can be a stubborn fool).

Things got off to a bad start when I had to sign into my Slayers Club account before the game would show me the main menu. Then when I was playing, it paused every few seconds to tell me that it couldn’t connect to the server, which utterly kills the vaunted flow of combat.

And the combat. Ugh. Doom 2016 is excellently balanced, providing 10 fun weapons for different situations which let people find their own playstyles, and prioritising ammo drops when the player is low on ammo and health drops when low on health. Eternal fans claim that there is no reason to use anything other than the super shotgun, and I have no doubt that strategy worked for them, but I used all the weapons, and I don’t think I used the super shotgun very much at all.

Eternal officially gives you nine weapons, but each of them has three different fire modes (except the super shotgun, which just has two fire modes and also a meathook), so there are really 26 guns plus two different grenades. And every single fucking enemy has a hardcoded weakness to two, maybe three attacks, and are barely hurt by anything else. These aren’t weaknesses to individual weapons, but to specific weapons in specific modes, and some of those modes have to be unlocked by meeting specific conditions. Every single demon hits like a dump truck and moves like a motorbike, so by the time you have selected the specific weapon that will do more than a papercut, you have a completely different demon in your face. And the guns in this Doom game hold fuck all ammo even when fully upgraded. And getting upgrades often requires playing suboptimally.

Speaking of ammo, the chainsaw has been downgraded from powerful emergency weapon to tool for obtaining ammo. You can find the odd ammo pickup in levels, but 90% of the time, the only way to get more ammo is to chainsaw a weak demon (demons don’t drop ammo otherwise). Because you can barely carry enough ammo to kill one heavy demon, I spent the 90% of the arena battles running around, desperately dodging attacks as I waited for the chainsaw to refill so I could get some ammo to shoot at the big demons. And the arena battles don’t use waves; as soon as you kill a big demon, another one teleports in to replace it, so there is no respite until you get near the end. This did not make me feel like a berserker-packing man and a half. I felt like a weak, terrified wimp, desperately trying to survive. Fighting hordes of demons isn’t epicly badass, it’s a long, tiring slog, and at the end of every arena, I didn’t feel empowered, I felt exhausted and relieved it was finally over.

To make an analogy, Doom 2016 is like an Italian pasta dish: a small number of high-quality, carefully-chosen ingredients that work well together. Doom Eternal is like making a sandwich of rashers, sausages, fried eggs, strawberry ice cream, venison, raspberries, spaghetti, and chocolate cake. All those things are great on their own, but the sandwich is just too much, and the flavours and textures all clash with each other.

Unless you live in Waterford, the song is accurate.

When I was little, my dad told me it’s called “bladder hurting”.

When my cousin’s three-year-old needs to use the toilet, she says “The wee wants to come out!”

Bikes aren’t allowed on motorways, and if you sneak past the checkpoints you have a good chance of dying.

I live in Tipperary. A while ago I had an interview for a job in Louth, and one of the interviewers asked me if I would be driving the breadth of the country every weekday; her tone of voice and body language suggested this was a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and more plausible than moving house.

I answered no, I’d move, because people who drive across multiple counties 10 times a week are lunatics. Turned out one of the other interviewers was a lunatic.

Federating with mbin and Piefed

What did/does he do?

Mr. Powers, everybody says that nudity and cursing aren’t Internet-safe. How much poem could there possibly be?

The one with naked people on it.