Having worked in phone support I can tell you what this actually means. We were ranked according to three metrics: productivity (calls per hour), customer satisfaction (% of surveys responded to with satisfied or very satisfied post call), and quality (periodic random checks of calls we took where you got a % score and various demerits subtracted from it if you did or didn’t do certain things, like all the crap they make you say at the end of the call).

Higher ranking in those got you the choice of better shifts and slightly higher raises (maybe), and there were minimums to hit in each.

So yeah, that message means they’re probably using random calls to do QA checks on their employees.

With HJKLYUBN unlike these modern savages with their arrow keys.

Arbitrary units. The graph’s creator is lampshading that the graph is totally made up in an amusing way.

It’s basically saying “made-up units” and “these units were made-up too.”

A proper haiku
Must also follow these rul--
*shot for pedantry*

For anyone unfamiliar, it’s punning on math having its own definition of “countable”, meaning able to be put into a one-to-one correspondence with the natural numbers (positive integers).

The real numbers, as a set, are not countable in that context (Cantor’s diagonal argument is a famous and rather elegant proof), even though they are countable in the sense that grammar rules refer to.

Went with Linux Mint back in July, set up a dual boot in case I’d need Windows for anything. Figured something or other wouldn’t work through wine or some such. Never have booted back to Windows since.

I think the only issue I’ve had is that my 8BitDo controller won’t work via Bluetooth, but it works fine via USB. (Other Bluetooth devices have been fine, not that I have many.)

I haven’t looked into it myself but one option I’ve heard is buying (often refurb/second hand because I think they’re pricy) commercial displays such as businesses use (think fast food restaurant menus above the counter and the like).

Might be time to grab Psychonauts 2 at -85% (C$12). The first game was great. Not too much else I’ve been tracking is at a price I’d go for at the moment, though I haven’t looked past my wishlist for now.

Cracking the Cryptic would be my top addition to the list. Daily solves of quality human-set variant sudoku puzzles and weekly cryptic crossword solves.

Still worth reporting to police. They might either know how to help you find the info they need or some info you happen to know but didn’t think of might be relevant. If nothing else, they can put out a warning that has been happening around the area/school.

This sounds scarily like some of the sextortion cases that have been happening - mysterious stranger starts asking for more and more until they get nudes or other explicit content, then start blackmailing the victim to avoid having it released… it’s nasty stuff, not least because they tend to target children.

Game Changer is still my favourite, it’s why I came to the platform and found everything else. (I didn’t get into D20 at all until quite a bit later honestly.)

There are three good candidates for top episode from the last season – the first one and the last one for sure, but I think maybe the one that takes it for me is Rulette.

If I may honourable mention, I did not really expect to enjoy Gastronauts as much as I did, and it is genuinely so much fun. I’d be hard pressed to single out a top ep honestly.

A slight correction, en-dashes are used mostly to indicate ranges like Mon–Fri. Hyphens are a separate third thing, smaller than an en-dash.

- hyphen
– en-dash
— em-dash

They get their names originally from having the same width as the letter n or m respectively in typesetting (though not all fonts follow that necessarily).

Yes

I tend to agree. They say it’s specifically for the game preservation stuff, and maybe that’s true. Most companies would create a separate non-profit with its own funding separate for such a thing (not that all those are necessarily great either). I like what GOG does in general and I think it’s important they’re there, but I don’t have any intention of donating to a for-profit business based on the claims that they’ll only do game preservation work with the funds.

I’m not spending an era reading through all the terms & conditions, but at a quick glance I can’t see anything in the legalese about what they can/can’t use GOG Patrons funding for, so it seems like it’s just paying the company monthly for a few extra perks and hoping they’ll use that cash for something positive.

In terms of automated suggestions, I’ve had some luck with Storygraph. It has better recommendations than Goodreads, as it actually tries to go by your reading history and recent reads, and allows you to filter by factors like mood, pacing, genre, page count, etc.

It’s not perfect by any stretch, but it has found me stuff that I wouldn’t have otherwise spotted.

Asking a local librarian is also an option. They’re usually happy to offer suggestions, and I’ve seen it in some cases where the library’s website has means to send a request for recommendations online.

Mary Simon, a Canadian citizen and an indigenous person (Inuk on her mother’s side) who was chosen by Queen Elizabeth for the role on the advice of then prime minister Trudeau.

While the role has formal diplomatic ties to the monarchy, it is a Canadian who holds it and the prime minister who really selects them (in the guise of advising the crown on who to select).

Of course the monarchy has diplomatic power here (all the rich and powerful do) but the governor general isn’t really an example of the crown being able to issue us orders or the like.

I sorta remember Earth: 2025 and Utopia being a bit like that. You’d generate turns over time and login once or twice a day to spend the turns. Not sure if that’s exactly what you meant by BBS though, and the only ones I know offhand I think were all late 90s starts.

If anything it’s more of a language thing that stuck when translated. Japanese uses their word for confession (kokuhaku) both for confessing to a crime and professing one’s love/attraction. The latter is also often how people are asked out (think “I really like you, do you want to go for dinner” – the “I really like you” bit is the “confession”).

It could’ve been localised as asking out instead, but the more literal translation was used often enough to become normalized. So now we see “he confessed to her” instead of “he asked her out” in translations a lot when the former is a fairly typical Japanese way of saying the latter.

“It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size. For Sister Thorn of the Sweet Mercy convent Lano Tacsis brought two hundred men.”

• Red Sister, Mark Lawrence.

Good book if you want something a bit like Harry Potter but aimed at a more mature audience and not funding the stripping away of human rights.