I once had a package marked as having arrived despite never moving past the “shipping label printed” stage. But the company did send me a second one, and then a week later the first one arrived too and they told me to keep it.

The advantage of that last approach is that it has side effects and cannot therefore be optimized out by the compiler.

Any true Roman Empire appreciator would happily be devoured by lions for the amusement of Emperor Nero.

The USA was in no danger of losing the Civil War by that point.

Please, don’t make me choose between Rome and libertarianism. I love them both too much.

I can think of no one I would rather see in bed with me when I wake up than Darth Vader.

Not really archaic - if this was valuable stuff washing up on shore, the law would still be relevant.

Members of the British government have been calling for strong efforts to ensure the shipping company and its insurers will pay the costs of the cleanup. Seatrade, which operates the vessel, said its insurers are fully engaged in the process, and in the meantime, volunteers are scouring the beaches, aiding in the cleanup (and possibly taking a few bananas home as a reward).

I don’t think the 1/e strategy changes just because candidates have a chance of rejecting you.

Is that a haiku?

Wesley Crusher.

I seem to recall reading that some gladiators had a layer of fat, perhaps because that way in fights not intended to end in death, shallow wounds would bleed a lot and entertain the crowd without causing serious injury.

It doesn’t look like the first explosions penetrated the hull. I suppose that the intent was to knock out the rudder but this outcome is still surprising to me.

I would often use both the title and the person’s nickname, but never just the name. So, for example, “Papa Mike” but not “Mike” or “Michael”. It made more sense for grandparents because I had two of each, but I did it for my parents too.

I do wonder about stores like that. According to a friend of mine who worked on the household staff of a very rich family, they did buy extremely expensive stuff in boutique stores even when much cheaper alternatives were almost as good (or even equally good, I suspect) but how many rich people like that are there? That same friend told me that at least some of those stores are vanity projects for that same sort of rich person - they want to own the sort of store they think is cool or cute, and they don’t actually need it to turn a profit.

There is an old video game called Lords of Magic in which the Order faction (which is about unified effort towards the greater good) has as its top-level spell “Heroic Demise”. Mechanically the spell gives one unit a big boost to all its stats, but the catch is that at the end of the battle that unit always counts as having been killed.

I was very reluctant to use it when I was a little kid because I didn’t want to kill my own units, but of course the lesson is that units will die anyway and fewer will die in total if you deliberately sacrifice some. Very thematically appropriate…

I refuse to separate out my compost.

In the eyes of anyone who wants to elect pragmatists who don’t tilt at windmills.

I’m not sure why people want him to humiliate Democrats by trying something doomed to failure. Hegseth can’t be impeached successfully unless multiple Republicans support doing so.

So we’re at the “I didn’t do it, but if I did then it isn’t so bad” stage.